Today’s Peanuts comic strip features Charlie Brown’s sister Sally struggling to spread frozen butter on her toast. Finally she exclaims, “Nobody told me life was going to be this hard!” I can understand Sally’s frustration. Life is hard. This was not in the brochure. Or at least that is what I once believed. In fact that very information is in the brochure. The Bible is very clear that life will be a journey of struggling to spread frozen butter and worse (that is a paraphrase). Much worse. I am going through one of those frozen butter times right now but I have come to understand that those times are part of the journey. God has given us a wonderful gift that we too often leave unwrapped. The gift of laughter. The following excerpt is from my sporadically selling book “Bring’em Back Alive – A Healing Plan for those Wounded by the Church.”  I believe a sense of humor is one of God’s gifts to help get us to the
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I am afraid that I offended a fellow blogger with my post about what I believed to be the damage done to the box office totals of End of the Spear  by an Evangelical backlash. Byron Harvey wrote to let me know that I was wrong, that I had misrepresented his intent about his opposition, and that my logic was flawed. I suspect he has also removed me from his Christmas card list.  Byron has a blog called The No Kool Aid Zone (love that title) and he took offense that I had lumped him in with some of the more extreme reactions to the controversy about Chad Allen. I made some broad statements about the treatment the movie and the production company received. I may be a “Bad Christian” but I try to be a fair one. I hope that readers understand that not everyone who disagreed with casting Chad Allen was angry or graceless. Forgive me if I gave anyone that impression. That was not my intent. I am giving Byron a chance here on the
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The box office run of End of the Spear is likely drawing to a close. The backlash from a number of Christian blogs, publications, and from many  pulpits accomplished its goal. Estimates are that the controversy cut the box office return by one-half to two-thirds. I wish congratulations were in order. But I am simply burdened and discouraged by our choice of battles in the evangelical community. I should never be allowed near a keyboard when I am angry. But I hope that all who advocated a boycott are happy with the results. Your efforts kept a lot of people away from a movie that has a powerful message. I have not talked to a single person who saw the movie (and that would be dozens) who was not moved by the portrayal of forgiveness and redemption. No one that I know cared who played the role of Nate Saint. Typical response. “Oh, he was gay? (pause) He did a good job.”
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Americans apparently know more about “The Simpsons” than they do about the First Amendment. Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey according to a story released today by the Associated Press. The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms. The survey found more people could name the three “American Idol” judges than identify three First Amendment rights. They were also more likely to remember popular advertising slogans. It also showed that people misidentified First Amendment rights. About one in five people thought the right to own a pet was
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Thomas Jefferson is an enigma for many. A recent article by Bruce Tomoso in the Dallas Morning News noted that his enemies accused him of being an atheist and yet he started the statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom with the phrase, “Almighty God hath created the mind free.” But he certainly would not have been invited to speak at an evangelical conference to share his beliefs that most clergymen are “soothsayers and necromancers.” You likely have a bigger brain than I do but I will confess that I had to look up necromancers. It literally means one who interrogates the dead. Okay. Not sure what church Jefferson was frequenting but clearly he had some issues with clergy and he believed that most of what they preached was a mockery of Jesus’ teachings. Jefferson “believed that an authentic Christianity had long ago been hijacked by the Christian Church,” wrote Erik Reece in the December Harper’s. Jefferson decided to just fix the problem. So he took out his
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Why would anyone ask a self-described “Bad Christian” a question? And yet, for some reason, readers of this daily rambling have recently posed a number of inquiries for me to consider. Some forced me to think, some made me laugh, some made me a little angry, and a few made my heart ache. I have decided to tackle a few of them so here is the first (and very possibly the last) edition of “Ask a Bad Christian.” Dear Bad Christian, Did Paul who preached at Ephesus have a wife?   Evelyn Dear Evelyn, The Bible does not state whether Paul was married or not. So we can only try to piece together bits of evidence to reach a conclusion. Clearly Paul felt that marriage was cool because he wrote this to the Church at Corinth. “Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?” (I Cor.9:5)
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My dear friend and e-mail pest Nelson deposited this story in my cyber mailbox this morning. With more than 1 million copies in print, “Marley and Me — Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog” has struck a chord with dog lovers who are laughing and crying over author John Grogan’s account of his yellow Labrador retriever. The story is more than a recounting of Marley’s antics that include chewing through doors, expulsion from obedience school, clawing paint off concrete walls, devouring furniture, swallowing valuable jewelry and swooning over soiled diapers. “It’s really not just a dog book,” Grogan said in an interview with Reuters. “Before Marley, our life was about career, relationship, and ourselves,” said Grogan, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He helped us shift from an egocentric life to something more generous.” In the book, Grogan wrote: “Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your
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