xy

My wife and I have been fairly strict about Malachi's exposure to weaponry and the concept of death. The latter is of course more difficult to hide. Death introduced itself to Malachi through the quick and untimely demise of Sammy the Fish, a goldfish of course, which had a half-life of 30 seconds. We buried it under a tree and for a couple of weeks Malachi asked repeatedly to go see it. Finally I told him that Sammy the Fish was dead and that his body became dirt, but that since we buried him under a tree, Sammy the Fish's dirt became part of the tree. Now we will always know where Sammy the Fish is. Beautiful, right? When I related this story to Angela, she balked. I think her exact words were "Holy crap!" My mom bought Malachi a new fish, a hearty fish, a fish you hardly have to clean or feed, a Betta. Malachi named him Sammy the Fish.

About this time, Malachi started preschool. It wasn't long before he picked up a stick, pointed it at me, and said, "Pew pew!"
"What is that, Mo'?"
"It's my Pewing Thing," he said proudly. "Pew pew!"
"Oh, those are dangerous. They kill things. That means their dead."
"Dead?"
"Yeah. Like the first Sammy the Fish."
"Sammy the Fish is in the tree, Daddy."
"Yeah, well, he's also dead. He's not alive anymore."
"I can go see him whenever I want."
"Hmmm. Well just don't point that thing at people, ok?"
"Ok, daddy. Pew pew!"

I finally had mercy on the poor kid and gave him the language he needed to talk about these things--guns, bullets, destruction, Armageddon, the wrath of God. At the family ranch, I found a BB gun and gave him a little lesson in gun safety and then proceeded to shoot the crap out of a Coke can. Turns out I'm a crack sharpshooter. Then I had him practice my safety lessons with the Buck Roger's ray gun he found buried in the toy closet.

Months pass and Malachi still has yet to see The Incredibles, Spider-Man, Batman, Transformers and other adult shit marketed to our kiddies. We capitulated in our weaponry rule a little though by buying him a knight costume complete with sword. He and Micah (the boy of the family we live with) run around slaying dragons and monsters, the roles of whom their sisters often play. Another game they enjoy involves Micah, dressed in one of his papa's oversized T-shirts, playing Jesus and Malachi invariably is God. Most of the time, the sword and battle axe are missing from this game.

One set of movies that we have let him watch is an animated series produced by Focus on the Family called the Story Keepers. It's about the early Christians who met secretly under Nero's rule and told each other stories about Jesus and his teachings. Nero is portrayed as this evil, spoiled brat--a thin, temper-tantrum throwing wimp with hordes of burly Roman soldiers at his command who chase the Christians around, burn down the Christian ghetto, throw them to the lions and gladiators, etc. Nothing shouts Kids Show! more than flaming human torches at parties and walls made of twisted naked people. Malachi sies enraptured by these videos, though his sisters now refer to them as "Maochi's Scary Show." We don't let them watch anymore.

One night, Malachi was in his armor chasing the other kids around yelling, "Kill the Christians! Kill the Christians!" I didn't know whether to cheer him on or take the opportunity to give another object lesson. So I tried to ignore it. Then things got quiet. A few minutes later I heard him tell Angela, "I killed Jesus."
"OH?"
"Yeah, he's died. But don't worry, mommy, he will be alive again in 3 days."

I'm not sure whether he was God or a Roman soldier at the time, but apparently Malachi knows the Gospel story quite well--the facts of it anyway. Even though he doesn't quite understand love as the back story, he has the Gospel message down about as well as many people I know. But a half-story is really a whole...whatever, and as far as I can tell, from what I hear, you either have sin and judgment and salvation from those or Jesus and love and roses. But, put them together and you have...um...

Labels: christianity, death, gladiators, gospel, guns, jesus, life lessons

I was asked to respond recently to the "lowlights" of the "You Say You Want A Revolution" conference as summarized by Gary Shavey, a pastor in Mark Driscoll's Acts 29 leadership network. The conference was put on by the good folks at "Off The Map" (part of the Emergent Village network - to which you might call Acts 29 the antithesis) and headlined by Brian McLaren, George Barna, and Spencer Burke (from TheOoze.com and author of The Heretics Guide to the Bible).

You can read Gary Shavey's article at Driscoll's The Resurgence site. Here is my response:


I think that Gary Shavey went to the You Say You Want A Revolution conference skeptical and looking to pick a fight - so right off the bat his "summary" is suspect. However, most of his comments were fairly measured, and as he says, "all over the map." I do heartly agree with his "What the...?" about the $2.50 drip coffee - what the crap is that?! What a rip!

Honestly, these days what I am most interested in is helpful contributions to the overall conversation about the church and living in a way that pleases and serves God. I saw the ads for this conference and what the topics were and frankly I immediately pushed the delete button.
It's the same conversation I've heard over and over and over, not really contributing anything. If Shavey's experience is to be trusted, then my sense of the conference was right on. Shavey's summary doesn't really contribute anything either. It went from a "based on what I was looking for, here's what I agree with" to a "I knew it, these heretics are a bunch of freaks who are revolutionizing the "conversation" into a money-making Christianese venture." Not a particularly helpful position.

To be honest, I've grown tired of Jim Wallis and the "Sojourners" line too. I can't remember who it was that said this (it might be my current writer hero David James Duncan), but whoever it was said that anyone who claims to speak for God is missing it and basically more interested in propaganda than the whole truth, that Wallis is making the same mistake that "Evangelicalism" and the "Religious Right" has made, namely speaking for God (e.g. the title of his book God's Politics - or, on the other end of the spectrum, the ever popular "Growing Kids God's Way" by Gary Ezzo). Only Wallis comes at it from the "Religious Left" while trying to position himself as a centrist, something he is only partially successful at doing. Both he and McLaren have a tendency to let the more questionable aspects of liberation theology to serve as the backbone of their 3-second sound byte message (or the "Robin Hood" message as Shavey puts it). If I can wax prophetic, I think that Wallis' position will cause the decline of "Sojourners" influence to next to nothing over the next 5 to 7 years as their base of support grows older.

I have the same problem with the secularists who also criticize the Church and Christianity, like in that book Kingdom Coming. It tries to raise the alarm and serve as an expose of Christianity in exactly the same way that Dobson (and Driscoll and his crew) raises the alarm and exposes the evil secular/pseudo-religious feminist left. But, rather than a helpful contribution toward something better, we get instead the message that women need to support their husband's "ministry" by staying home and that the men had better start acting like men, gird up their loins, enter the fray, and come home to pork their wives whenever they want. These perspectives help to get us nowhere and they do exactly the same thing that the most recent round of political advertisements did - fling shit and piss people off. The language of war and battle can only get us so far. What we need now is to find more helpful language before Christianity gets to the same place that that language and perspective got the world in 1945 (and, for that matter, in 2006).

So, as I survey the land, I once again see that everyone is fighting and clawing away at each other as American Chrisitianity goes to Hell in a Starbucks holiday giftpack. I continue to see the "twilight of the saints" (as I wrote about earlier) and I'm not seeing anyone filling the vacuum that is forming.

Labels: acts 29, barna, christianity, church, driscoll, emergent, god's politics, mclaren, religion, resurgence, revolution, theooze, wallis, western