Kneading Bread

At least purportedly. Thomas Kinkade, hated by art history teachers, artists, and general good taste is supposedly under investigation by the FBI. I don’t have much love for people who produce junk then say “praise Jesus,” and expect us not to call it junk.
(via boingboing)

Full disclosure: My wife, mother, and aunt are all artists… and they all think he produces crap… I just happen to concur. My wife’s christian, my mother and aunt are lapsed catholics (agnostics at best.) My mother-in-law loves his stuff; she, however, is a little to the right of Pat Robertson… on a good day.

This came up in my google news feed this morning:

The Reality of the Inconvenient Truth

In reality, the Inconvenient Truth represents a much broader significance. The environmental movement represented by Al Gore plays a significant role in the “The Axis of Appeasement” and is directly linked to the formation of Leftist/Marxist – Islamist Alliance.

The Inconvenient Truth is that many of the environmental, social justice, anti-war, leftist, and Islamic groups have in common senior personnel, members of advisory and director boards and in some cases common supporters and funding including foundations and corporations. The organizations in many cases have interlinking of the boards. In many cases these organizations are the cosponsors of the rallies and protests we are seeing occur on a global scale. This is in no way to say that all supporters of some of these causes are not sincere in their desire for a better world. As a conservative environmentalist we all need to support environmental action that is also critical for your future. However, support of the organizations naively or otherwise can be contributing to support of organizations that are against liberty and freedom and seek to establish a global totalitarian government.

The war against the Islamists will not be won with military might and the war on terror; the battle must also be waged in the media, the schools, the NGOs, and the board rooms of corporations.

It was from the “Global Politician” which claims to be “an independent magazine providing objective, in-depth analysis of events in the world today.” I had to create a whole new category for this… it’s just too crazy

So I was reading boingboing this morning, only to see the insanity going on there. Aparently a child saw a ad for a new Barney movie, only it wasn’t (it was a defaced sign with a reference to Barney’s nether regions.) The father wrote into the local paper decrying this act… well in words that are best his (from the editorial):

“Look, Daddy, a Barney movie!” I couldn’t see it, so she guided my eyes to the vulgar obscenity arranged there on the sign. “Look! Up there! Barney’s p***s!” I was shocked when I saw the words arranged on the sign. I quickly averted her eyes and escorted her into the store.

Since then, she has not stopped mentioning Barney’s p***s. This has shaken the bedrock of our family. I made an emergency call to our church’s pastor about this bombshell in my daughter’s life and he is unsure how it will affect her future.

This sort of sick joke is typical of unlawful teenagers across the country, but I just didn’t think the little town of Fallbrook was home to such hoodlums. I am frightened for my daughter’s future; she won’t stop bringing up this horrible movie title! I would like Daniel’s Market to apologize for traumatizing my daughter, and I would like the pranksters to know just how vile their criminal act was.

So of course, like a good god-fearing man he calls his pastor about this… as AN EMERGENCY and the pastor, who aparently is taking quotes from the politician playbook, gives a non-answer. I fear that the party most traumatized by this sign is the father. I don’t have kids myself, but I was blessed because my parents made sure that I never felt sexuality was dirty or wrong, but rather a fact of life. The proper names for body parts never carried a stigma – because anything “secret” or “forbidden” immediately has power. The father has allowed this to have far more power in his life – “christian morals” will never make up for Christ’s power and freedom. Bondage to fears and the unknown are something that Christ comes to conquer, but sadly we are a meek (in the bad way) imitation of Christ.

In the eco-community sin carries a slightly different connotation, but I have to agree with the principle. Treehugger has an article that basically consists of an exception, a second-home-owner with a conscience about their second home.

This caused me to think afresh on the subject (I feel like environmental care is  intimately related to our care for others.) I live on the “North Shore” in Massachusetts, and it saddens me to so many beautiful victorian seafront homes go unoccuppied as the owner pays for heat and AC and ground maintenance so they can weekend there throughout the summer. I hope that Christianity can meditate on the fact that we are often worse than the Levite (Luke 10) who walks by the battered and abused, we aren’t even walking by – we are driving by (both figuratively and literally) in oppulence and luxury. It is time to ask ourselves if we are worse Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5), they kept a little and were zapped… we keep a lot. We may not live in an era where the church is communal, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to create a Church that is self-giving and self-sacrificing. More and more everyday I see the root of many sins, selfishness, in me and I, similar to when I would pick weeds as a child, try to clean out a path only to find they have grown where I’ve just cleared. I’m not saying all consumption is a sin, but I fear that if we don’t try to at least assess our present state we put ourselves at risk.

I’ve always struggled with what it means to be a member of a Church (from both the Church’s perspective and that of what it means to be willing to become a member of a church.) Mark Dever’s absolutely passionate and obviously Spirit directed perspective is refreshing and encouraging. In this world where the Church rolls are high, but the numbers in the pews are low all I can say after reading Mark’s post is, AMEN.

America: Where shameless consumption is a good thing…

Now you can get a mini-hummer at McDonald’s. Some jokes just write themselves!

Once your done thinking over the idiocy/humor/BanalityOfConsumers/etc. go and have some fun with RonaldMcHummer.

At the cross is the man who loves his enemies, the man whose righteousness is greater than that of the Pharisees, who being rich became poor, who gives his robe to those who took his cloak, who prays for those who despitefully use him. The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom: it is the kingdom come.

The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their patience (Rev. 13:10). The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of violence and other kinds of power in every human conflict; the triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.

John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

My wife said to me yesterday that she was so sick of what was going on in Israel/Lebanon and that she was going to become an antiwar protester. To this I said something wimpy like, “both sides are wrong, there isn’t a right side.” While I don’t believe the world needs any more American style antiwar protesters – not if they are going to be almost exclusively white, upper-middle class, suburban, and self-righteously educated like they were when being anti-WTO was in fashion. America needs something bigger.

I believe that under some vague mask of christianity the current US administration has caused some of the most counter-Christian actions to occur. Money is taken away from social services and the public purse and returned to the rich in the form of “tax-cuts.” The USA is directly involved in 2 military actions (Iraq and Afghanistan) while tacitly allowing an ally to pursue similarly executed insanity in the name of terror-prevention (Israel against Hezbollah.) The agendas that dominate our legislative branch are deliberately designed to distract from these things with issues such as homosexuality and immigration creating an effective smokescreen against any kind of actual progress towards dealing with major constitutional issues relating to seperation of powers, human rights, and civil rights.

Jesus says that we are to render unto Caesar what is his, and Paul says we are to respect civil authority (keep in mind he wrote that under an authoritarian regime.) In recent years the evangelical-republican agenda has created a line of thinking that figures that “good, bible-believing, ‘real’ christians” should follow our federal government’s decisions because of some bizaare concoction of the above to verses (Matthew 22, Romans 13) and the belief that because a majority of officials profess a faith in evangelical Christianity their decisions therefore must be the most Christ-like.

So, back to what my wife said… I think that bible-believing folk of all creeds and stripes need to stand up to the injustice in this world – especially if it is being perpetrated in our name! How much longer will innocents die because we have decided that we are going to conveniently respect political authority instead of respecting the authority of the greater Kingdom? The irony of this whole thing being, we are the authority — we’re in a democracy!

Being a Christian is NOT easy living, the teachings of Christ are the biggest “inconvenient truths.” I know for sure that there have been times in my life when I have not visited Christ when he was in jail or gave Him food and clothing when He had neither, but I know for sure that things are wrong here and now and people are dying because of it. To steal a phrase from Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in the state of American Christianity.”

So protest, these wars are all wrong. I pray that in your protests you would find time to petition the greatest peacemaker of them all. Pray and plead for peace – pray that we would take to heart the words of the prayer our Savior taught us, that “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” In this coming Kingdom there will be eternal peace, might we be the bringers of a foretaste of that peace to this world!

Breakwater buoy

Originally uploaded by thomasmpowell.

Early morning (5:30 am) photo of a buoy located near the Rockland breakwater

I just started work this week after a long period of being jobless… postings will be a little scarcer until I settle down. I’ll be away this weekend enjoying one of my favorite local festivals, the Maine Lobster Festival.

If you are lucky enough to be in the Rockland area, you might also want to check out Alan Magee’s studio opening this weekend.