Brian Slezak

Yeah, well, apparently so. Or at the very least they support ad revenue that promotes atheism. Nice eh?

Pania went to bed early the other evening, and my mind was still awake even as tired as I seemed . While she slept I scrolled through the HBO on demand movies, finally coming to The Brave One. My memory sparked as I remembered wanting to see it after watching the trailer because I enjoy Jodie Foster in most of her movies. Impressed yet again with The Brave One, I was moved to write my off-the-cuff reaction. Spoilers follow – you’ve been warned.

I loved the way this film unraveled! The storyline revealed itself like a comic book, Batman for instance, but based itself more in reality than the fantastic. No caped crusader in this film; instead a petite woman, Erica, who is transformed by brutal violence into her darker self. After her fiance is beaten to death, and herself nearly so, she is reborn not into the light but into the dark. The same face in the mirror stares back at her as did before; she has not been physically altered, but a completely different person lives behind the same eyes.

The movie takes you through her downfall as she consciously and deliberately lets evil into her heart after defending herself in a convenience store robbery. She becomes a vigilante, consumed by the thrill of doing what she feels is good and right by eliminating evil from her city. The same evil that changed her forever, and killed her fiance. Her clothing through the film changes with her from white to gray and finally to black. We struggle with her as she knows what she is doing is wrong – it is killing; it is illegal. She swings from knowing she is right, to justifying her actions, to almost turning herself into authorities, and back again. At one point in the movie she gives away the crucifix necklace that was once her fiances, and she has been wearing throughout the movie, to a woman whose life she saved a few nights back. (She obviously does not truly understand what this symbol represents.) This done right in front of police officer and right after Erica asked the woman who she saw the night, and the woman replies no one.

I felt the movie struck a lot deeper than its surface appearance. The viewer has a connection to Erica, because in our hearts we want her to exact her revenge. She knows it’s wrong and so do we. What happened to her is horrible, and we want her attackers to be punished for what they did. Erica takes us down a the road where we choose dark. The movie made me feel that the dark is not just out there waiting for you to choose to step into it. The dark wants you. It is not waiting, but wanting. The dark wants us, because we want it. It is so natural in us even when we consciously know better. Choosing the light is so much harder. This was not a story of struggling with forgiveness.

Sadly, in true moral depravity that only Hollywood can produce, Erica not only exacts her revenge, she is justified by the police officer who is on to her throughout the movie and even instructed how to perform her crescendo of violence “legally.” The movie ends with Erica running away from the bloodbath that the officer has covered up, only to later stroll through the same dark tunnel where the story began – toward the light at the end of the tunnel. A better ending would be her walking into an ever darkening tunnel.

Aside from the ending (sigh) the movie is very well done, and is a present comic book story that is, scarily, easy to relate to. The lesson is how easy it is to relate to Erica’s dark desires, how easily they consumed her, and how quickly she fell away into the darkness. There is no light at the end of that tunnel folks. Revenge is not ours. If you found it easy to relate to Erica, you are not alone, but that does not make it just.

I sometimes listen to Marketplace on NPR on the way home because it is typically on during the time I leave for home. Tonight I heard a great quote that made me think of a conversation I had with a co-worker within the last month. We were discussing the major factors of US economic fallout and how to view it in positive light. We both agreed that these times will be our cross to bear as a nation, state, city, or family. Things will right themselves, and this is a time for growth.

The quote was by Charles Handy, the “London Business School founder and Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School of Business Professor.”

[Referring to the US econmic situation] But there may be some good news in all of that and we may get back to a saner kind of world — what Adam Smith [author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations] called “cultivation” or “civilization” — where we don’t all sort of spend our life trying to make money, to buy things we don’t really need to impress the neighbors, and so on. But we actually do work not 60 hours a week, but 40 hours a week. Where we actually do take holidays. Where we actually get to know our kids again. ….

How tragic does that sound?

Is the over-inflated cost of health care in the United States an instance of capitalism gone bad?
Is it the role our government to intercede when anything goes bad?

These were a couple of questions that went through my mind the other night as I was doing a poor job at falling asleep. I think I ended up generating more questions than opinions.

There is money to be made off the sick. Doctors are highly paid, and hospitals have boards and stake holders that receive compensation in non-profit and for-profit organizations. When the actions of a non-profit hospital become about maximization of surplus, (non-profit lingo for ‘profit’,) and inflated reimbursement to executives rather than providing health care for the community, I think they put their 501(c)(3) status in jeopardy. The government collects taxes, and if your organization’s purpose is to provide charitable services, they can waive those taxes.

The previous paragraph aside, and assuming everyone agrees that all people deserve access to medical care, how do you build a system that allows equal access to that care regardless of a persons station in life? Some may measure equality by the cost of the service. I think we should measure equality by the access to the service. On the surface, it doesn’t seem fair that someone with great wealth should pay more for health care than someone with little wealth. I can see how someone would look at that and say, “That’s clearly not fair,” and I suppose they would be right. It is not equitable in value, but it is honorable. I think it is a morality failure for those with more to not help those with less. It is a morality failure to abuse health care for personal gain rather than using it to care for humanity.

We need more incorrupt people managing health care rather than more legislation attempting to regulate moral behavior. Maybe the former is just a pipe dream?

For some time now, my wife and I have been attending Living Water Christian Church, in Parkville, MO. (About a 40 min. drive for us. Ouch!) This week’s e-mail from pastor Laura held my attention pretty well. In it, she relayed a conversation with her son:

My son Rob had a conversation with me recently, in which he was bemoaning the state of “organized religion.” He said, “People in churches can’t be real, they have to pretend to be someone they’re not.” I stopped him before he could go any further and said, “Living Water may not be a perfect church, but we have lots of people who have been honest about who they are and what they struggle with. We have made it clear that we accept and welcome everyone because all of us have baggage.”

That spurred this post, which is somewhat my own response to the Robs of this world. I wholly agree with Laura about Living Water, though I know where Rob is coming from, even though my “old guy” years give me a different perspective. For what I would guess is the majority, there is the life we live outside of church, imperfect, flawed, sinful, and via the human condition we simply accept this, and just drudge forward. Rarely we change our ways, or even acknowledge our failures. Then there is the life we live at church, where we are baptized in Christ, eat the bread and drink the juice, act as a better Christian for an hour or two, and try to befriend people we don’t know and build a community.

So what’s with the double-agent lifestyle? Where is the accountability? Why can’t we be like Rob and others envision, where if we say we buy into it … we actually BUY into it? To err is human.

This made me recall a conversation I had with Chuck Russell regarding accountability groups. Essentially these are small groups where individuals hold each other accountable to a very high degree for living a good Christian life. Why are these groups not wildly popular in every church? I think it is because people don’t want that. It’s to effective! “I seriously have to give up my sinful ways behind closed doors and live *that* life? For the love of God that sounds boring!”

For the love of God, we turn away, and are loved regardless by His grace.

Our flaw may be small, only a seed, or it may be a full grown tree with deeply set roots. Christianity is a walk – not a switch that is turned on and off. We accept Christ as our savior, strive to overcome our weaknesses, but we do not change overnight.

How does today’s church affect our lives in practicality? It may start with that person in the mirror.

In my previous post, I described my experience and opinions on day one of the Everything Must Change Tour that took place on Friday evening. Saturday morning, the conference began again at 7:29 am. I have to say that is really early to get postmoderns out of bed, but plenty were awake enough for good conversation. The morning started with break-outs, and we attended McLaren’s session on church plants. It was essentially just a gathering of people involved in church plants, young churches, or those trying to do something new in established churches. We sat in a circle of chairs and people commiserated about the difficulty of those tasks.

My wife and I connected with trying to do something new in established churches. Most people talked about how the old guard would work against them, and in some extreme cases just kick them out of the church. McLaren led the discussion and would interject his experience where appropriate. The conversation followed natural peaks and ebbs, and everyone seemed comfortable to participate. My wife and I agreed later that this was by far the best part of the event.

We talked about what “church” meant and how that differed from traditional ideas and the difficulty in reaching the unchurched. Brian used a phrase that stuck in my mind, “Leadership By Anxiety,” to describe using the natural energy around an idea to push through making a change. It reminded me of Adam Hamiton’s “Decision by Nausea” concept, which he uses to discern which of many paths he should to choose. The path that God leads you down is often the most challenging, and frightening.

Over all it was good, but here is my constructive criticism: The buzzword “narrative” was used quite a bit through the discussion. I don’t understand why we as people take simple things and make them complex in order to feel more enlightened. Other than that minor criticism, the only unsettling thing about the discussion was a strange quietness about what to call what they were doing. People used phrases like, “where we are”, “what we are doing here,” “how we were led to this.” To be honest, it made me feel like I didn’t really know what was going on, like I was sitting in some sort of cult-ish or secretive meeting. Kind of weird.

Other than the morning discussion we had a morning of worship. The songs were chanted, and very meditative. So much so we almost fell asleep. After we finished, we had to leave early to attend our nieces birthday party.

Overall, still just ok. Swag was good. :-/

This evening I attended the Everything Must Change Tour, presented (I supposed), by Deep Shift. I live-tweeted the event, if that’s what you call it, which was my first attempt at using Twitter. It was very one-directional, as I did it through my cell phone and didn’t have device updates on. New guy – my bad.

I registered for the event late last year after hearing of it somehow. My wife and I had heard Brian McLaren speak at one other occasion, knew he was associated with this, so we signed up. It wasn’t cheap – $75+ per person at early bird price, but if you got in on the early bird deal you got a copy of Everything Must Change, one of McLaren’s books. Oh, and it ended up you got a compact fluorescent after showing up. “Yeah. Check out my totally enviro-friendly bling, yo. 1200 lumens for only 20 watts dawg.” So you got swag for $75. Not all bad.

I had a creepy feeling about the event from the time I registered though because of some of the language surround the event. To be perfectly blunt, it felt very bleeding-heart, tree-hugger, all we need is love … ish. Oh well, at the very least it’ll be a good experience for my wife and I. This feeling was intensified after getting to our seats and thumbing through the handouts. Let me extend this feeling to you by way of quoting some of the material:

…. Therefore we will practice ‘listening one another into free speech,’ ‘building bridges of empathy,’ ‘creating safe spaces,’ and other strategies of revolutionary communication.

When I see or hear ___ I feel ___, because my need for ___ is/is not being met. Would you be willing to ___.

When you said ___, I felt ___. Can you understand why I would feel that way?

A short commentary: Umm – Wow. 1. Revolutionary? Really? Seriously? 2. I’m building my bridge of empathy to solitude, and I don’t care where your bridge goes. 3. If I “felt” that much all the time, I’d be in therapy, or I’d be a woman. (I do not mean any offense to women, I am just a guy that’s all. But if that made you feel ___ because it was ___, I would suggest ___. No ___ intended.)

During one of the discussion times, I met Al. Al asked me what I thought of this so far. (Thus far we had experienced good music, a Sierra Club video, and some speaking by Linnea Nilsen Capshaw.) I admitted I had little expectation, not doing any research about it beforehand, but felt “like it was a bunch of liberal stuff.” Al gave me a concerned look, a nod, and agreed.

Brian McLaren spoke. He’s a good presenter, and a good speaker, so you can’t go too wrong. One thing I like about Brian is that he loves circles. Two dimensional circles. The man can explain anything he needs using circles, usually three or four … and maybe a box. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but that was ok because I wasn’t supposed to. He told us that before he started, and I happened to agree with him about that, and some other things too.

We broke into another discussion time to talk about our thoughts and feelings, and Al turns around to me and states, “Yeah, I’m afraid you were right. He is off base, and just wrong about ….” Unfortunately, Al and I were on the same page. This wasn’t the McLaren we knew, and to my initial concern; McLaren was veering hard left toward the target audience.

Overall, the evening was OK. The music was great, McLaren wasn’t at his best, and the evening was much like a sub-standard worship service. If I didn’t get books and swag, I would have been very disappointed. My wife tolerated it. That is to say she didn’t go postal on me, but sternly said I owe her something in return that is better than ice cream. She and I agreed that the time progressed much like a mainline worship service. Singing, greeting, prayer, shake some hands, singing, listen to preaching, prayer, singing, benediction. There was more discussion thrown in than usual. Oh – we did miss communion, but it wasn’t the first weekend of the month.

It may sound like I’m vehemently against the left, but I am really not. I have some liberal views that get me chastised, and I’m fine with that. I just take the extreme left less seriously. You kind of have to, because when they state in the materials that Brian will intentionally avoiding using male pronouns when referring to God because the bible reflects God in feminine images as well as masculine; you have to call that out. At what point were all those “He” references misleading? Did I miss it when Jesus pulled out, “whoops, I meant Mother, not Father. My bad.”

Regardless, we’re attending tomorrow’s morning session as well, and Pania (that’s my wife) is even going with me when I expected her to bail. If tomorrow is blog-worthy, I’ll post about my experience.

Thanks to those for their comments on my previous and related post.

Well, I posted on the topic for two reasons. 1. There is much disagreement about it, and 2. I hope readers will do their own research and reach their own decision.

I read Kim’s post that Bob referred to, and I’ll say that Kim is very well written.

In my heart, I still believe that paying money to see the movie is making a donation to the cause of an atheist who targets children in attempt to sway them away from God. If you pay your money to see the movie, keep in mind this may be exactly what your doing.

I think this world would be better served, if rather than seeing this movie, people donated $10 and one and three quarter hours to a local mission. Spend quality time with someone who desperately needs it.

I also think using an inherently atheist tool to teach anyone about who God is or is not seems a dangerous method. Go battle the materialistic idolatry of the world, not an image of God that represents those things. Let G-o-d be as He always is.

Lastly, I’ll say that my position on this was formed from the references I mentioned, and other additional resources. I hope you read the posts and their comments, do your own research, and feel better informed to make your own decision.

I’m assuming most of you have heard of movie ‘The Golden Compass’ by now, since it has made the morning news, at least here in Kansas City. My thanks go to Phillip Pullman for giving me something to blog about.

I first heard about this movie through a chain e-mail referencing snopes.com. Earlier this week my wife saw the trailer on television and said, “Ooo. We have to go see that!” I messed up and in a knee jerk reaction said, “No, we’re not.” Doh! Yeah … that doesn’t work with my wife. So I get the look, we “discuss,” and I try to explain how the writer is a devoted atheist who purportedly targets children in attempt to “kill God” in their minds. She argued that it was just a fantasy movie, and no worse than The Devinci Code, which we did watch. It’s just a movie. Hmm. I still disagree on some levels, but she has a point in whether or not we go watch the movie.

So after this morning’s newscast mentioning it, I was pushed to learn why an Archbishop would support the movie, which has been touted as “anti-Catholic.” Williams even goes so far as to say the book should be taught in schools! I found this online article. Wow. What a world we live in where educators are trying to throw religion out of schools, and Archbishops are trying to get atheism in them.

Now, little of this seems to be hearsay, if you believe the sources and the source’s sources. So why on earth would you condone and support a movie “watered down … so as not to offend faithful moviegoers in the United Kingdom and United States” thats center is in an anti-religious theme written by a professed atheist whos purpose in life is to convince children that God is false?!?!? All for the sake of keeping an open mind? Wha … bu … huh?

Ultimately, no one is going to affect whether or not people go see the movie. For the first time though, I find myself with pretty strong convictions to boycott this movie. It is just a movie, but I can’t rationalize away the guilt I’d feel by supporting it.

One of the topics that permeated both the Spring and Fall CITRT (Church IT RoundTable) events was whether Information Technology in the church is a ministry. For some, the answer to that was simply yes, while many seemed unsure, and a few others said no.

As I typed this post, I was sitting in a Q&A session with my boss, Clif Guy, and his boss, Brent Messick. Brent is the executive director over operations, one of two executive directors at Resurrection. We were there with a group of interested guests, who were visiting in connection with Leadership Institute, a leadership event Resurrection holds annually. Without my prompting, this topic came up! Brent mentioned that some people have asked if he considers operations a ministry. Brent restated his answer to us, “It is a ministry. Absolutely. I say that unabashedly!” He marked some obvious points of contact such as guest services or finance.

Here’s how I’ve thought about it. If work roles that support ministry are inherently ministry, such as information technology roles, then where does ministry stop? Are the vendors who sell us equipment and supplies performing ministry? Without vendors we couldn’t perform ministries the same way right? Banks. Are banks performing ministry when they assist finance to get invoices and salaries paid? Is supporting ministry inherently ministry too? Or is work a ministry only when it directly impacts the lives of people, such as discipleship and service? It seems to come down to the interpretation of ministry and where you draw the line.