The UnMobile RV

I have a neighbor across the street who two years ago bought a large 5th wheel RV.  The idea was that he was going to do some travelling with his girlfriend.  He parked it in his driveway in anticipation of his great adventures. 

Two years later, the 5th wheel has moved once, and that for two days out into the street in front of his house, before it finally was moved back into the exact same position.  I am guessing that he had to get something out of his garage that he could not get otherwise. 

It's kind of a family joke to think about the 5th wheel never moving anywhere at all, but how often do we go through lives with great plans and then never act upon them?  Maybe there is a reason that in taking the letter 'v' out of 'lives' one ends up with 'lies': are our lives often just lies when we don't add something into them? 

Christians so often do the same thing.  We claim to follow Jesus Christ, and we claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and we claim to be following the Word of God.  Yet far too many Christians live lies rather than lives.  We are so filled with our own selfishness, so filled with the delusions of our everyday existence, that we never really live up to being what God wants us to be. 

Lord, make us people who do something with the lives you have given us.  May we be people who do not just make plans, only then to let them flounder; rather, help us to carry out what it is that you would have us to do.  Forgive us for the time we do nothing with this gift of life, but help us to know how we are forgiven by actively seeking out your goodness in everything we do.  In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

Are Mermaids Real?

On my school bus today two of my first graders got into an argument about whether or not mermaids are real.  The girl had a book called "Are Mermaids Real?  (I Want To Know!)".  The Goodreads page for this indicates that this is a 'narrative text' that offers 'possible scientific explanations for the myths'.  She also insisted that when she had gone to the seashore that she saw one, she really did!  A boy, however, decided that this was all hogwash, and claimed that they don't exist, and even though he loves this little girl and tells her almost everyday that he loves her (and do you love me too?), that no way do mermaids exist. 

Of course I got asked what I thought, and I told the boy that if he doesn't want to believe, then he doesn't have to believe, and I told the girl that if you want them to exist, they are very real.  It was a craptacular answer, really, and even now I wish I had gotten into a better discussion with them about how you determine what is real and what is not, and the power of belief and myth and so forth.  But then I think, they are in first grade, why can't I just let them enjoy their little love spat.

It's hard to know how to answer anybody these days, in this time in which people generally believe whatever it is that they want to believe.  Believe in UFOs?  Trump?  Unicorns?  Goody for you!  For all the power of the information age, I am convinced that people are more ignorant than they ever have been.  There's no shortage of books that offer 'possible scientific explanations' for anything, but the explosion of narrative texts means that people now can find support for whatever it is they want to believe.  Not to mention the dozens of channels on TV that cater to whatever fringe idea somebody has, or the internet and its various forms of conspiracy theories and whackjob ideologies.  The information superhighway of the 21st century leads far too many people off of a cliff. 

Fortunately, the Goodreads page of this author who specializes in works for young children has many other works that are of a more serious nature.  And it appears that her knowledge base is as wide as anybody in this age...she has written on Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge (current events(; The Grassland Biome (science!); Counting Coins and Bills (economics), and whether or not King Arthur was real (history).  Oh, and don't forget her books about aliens, unicorns, and countless other creatures of the universe. 

I'm glad that my first graders have such an outstanding base of knowledge to work with. 

Flat Faith

I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called Behind The Curve, which is about the growing 'Flat Earth' movement.  I wish there had been a bit more of the science behind it, and more rationale for why people defend this kind of belief, but it was still really good. 

A few things that I took from this film.  First, the people who think themselves the truly enlightened ones cannot imagine that they are creating a new dogma.  Near the end some of the people were asked about what would happen if they decided to leave, if they changed their minds, and the answer is that they can't.  The implication was that they are now too invested in this new mindset to ever admit wrongdoing. 

Second, the loneliness that brought many of these people into this movement is the glue that holds them together.  Are these mainly single white guys who live in their parents' basement?  Perhaps...but more than anything, these are people who want to be a part of something, to feel involved, to be accepted for their peculiarities.

Third, the sense that they are their own highest authority is their true polar star (for them, a projection on a Truman Show-like dome over the earth, but whatever...).  In the end, they are not really searching for truth, they are seeking to confirm their biases.  We can't feel the movement of the earth?  Thus it's not real!  Several of the defenders mentioned that they really trusted nobody but themselves in figuring all this out.  Even when irrefutable facts come, they will not change. 

And finally, the battle that these adherents fight are always against the 'them'.  'Them' might mean the CIA, NASA, the scientific dogmatizers, but more likely just a nameless, faceless entity that these freethinkers believe are hiding the truth.  It's all one great big conspiracy, and someday it will all come crashing down and the masses will finally see through this. 

In watching this I was struck by how similar these Flat Earthers are similar to some of the religious dogmatists I know.  I'm not talking about people who have a genuine love for God, a faith in Christ, an openness to see what the Spirit will do.  Rather, I'm talking about people whose particular Biblical interpretations must be 'sound', whose doctrine must be never-changing, whose opinions are taken to be absoulte truth.  In their minds they are not dogmatists, only defenders of the truth.  They only bind together to hide their loneliness, but even with that those relationships are fragile if somebody strays from what the newly accepted dogma is.  They believe there are mass conspiracies against them to pervert righteousness, and though they name 'them' sometimes they're better off just creating a straw man. 

I do feel somewhat in sympathy with the Flat Earth folks, because in a way we are all people who create our own worldviews and defend them with our dying breaths.  Some of us will at times change what we have to believe, but more likely we will hold onto what we believe, no matter how far-fetched it is. 

They Airbrushed My Face

So I came across this story today about how the White House has been airbrushing pictures of the president to make him look younger and more fit.  I know that some people are going to have a field day with this...but if you looked like that, wouldn't you do the same thing? 

As one who came of age musically in the 80s and 90s this was the first thing that came to mind, the centerfold of an REM album liner notes. 


When I first came across that picture all those years ago I marvelled at the possibilities of something like that being possible.  Wow, I can now look younger, more fit, more attractive? 

Of course, today we live in a time in which we have great suspicion about any photo or image.  Whether it's dudes flexing phantom muscles or politically motivated shots of politicians appearing somewhere they aren't or hamburgers that look much, much better than they do in reality, we never know what really to believe anymore...so we choose to stop believing. 

Maybe this will be the death of sites like Instagram, with all of its beautifully filtered photos of people and places.  People will get tired of the delusion.  Or maybe we will just learn to no longer accept anything at face value anymore.  Part of the worldview of any future generation will be a general agnosticism about almost anything, even as they enjoy the cropped and airbrushed pictures.  Even as lines between virtual reality and real reality begin to fade, will we no longer believe even what we can touch, see for ourselves, or hear? 

And what will this do to matters of real importance, like faith in Christ?  Will more people hold to a form of Christianity even as they casually dismiss the idea of resurrection or spiritual power to be unreal or impossible?  Will future generations no more believe the Scriptures and rather read the many deconstructions about how it came together as simply a human book? 

It's a scary world out there when you can't even tell that our president looks like the fat orange guy that he is.  But it reminds me, that he's the perfect president for our fake world.