It's that time of year again!

It almost goes without saying: I'm a big time movie buff. I love watching movies, I love going to movies, and I love talking about movies. Or, if I wanted to be pretentious: Films. I love films. If I could have done film study in college, I would have (among many other interests). So every so often, I take advantage of my blogspace and deviate from discussing social justice and issues in the church to discuss something frivolous and fancy free: movies.

As the Oscars are just over two weeks away, I thought it may be time to announce my picks for this year's Oscars, for what it's worth. While I haven't seen all ten best picture nominees, I've seen the big names, and feel pretty confident in my picks. I'll save Best Picture for last, to drum up anticipation (I'm sure you're just dying to hear my selections!).

Here we are, most of the major categories, excluding those I'm not particularly qualified to comment on.

Best Visual Effects: Inception will win this hands down. Though this is a great selection of choices, ranging from Tim Burton's insane Alice in Wonderland to the fun romp that was Iron Man 2, Christopher Nolan's blockbuster piece has enough pull and respect within the Academy to pull an easy win.

Best Cinematography: The Coen brothers' cinematographer Roger Deakins has been nominated for the cinematography category nine times, but something tells me he's still not going to get it. I think Black Swan will eke out a win here, as it is a truly beautiful film, though I wouldn't be surprised if this is Deakins' year. It's a toss up.

Best Editing: I think David Fincher's The Social Network is going to clean up in a lot of "smaller" categories here, and film editing will be one of them.

Best Documentary: Banksy could pull out a win for Exit Through the Gift Shop here, but I highly doubt the Academy will go with the "controversial" pick, especially if the winner can't show his face on TV. The Academy tends to be a bit, shall we say, "fuddy-duddy" when it comes to novelty things unless there's a large undeniable popular movement behind them (see Eminem winning an Oscar), and I don't think Banksy has quite enough pull to reach the more easily offended parts of the Academy. I'm going to go with Restrepo on this one - a doc about one year with a platoon in the deadliest valley in Afghanistan. As "liberal" as Hollywood can be, they like depictions of war (see Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker, Band of Brothers, etc).

Best Original Score: Trent Reznor's score for The Social Network will pull out a well deserved win here - there is not a moviegoer on the planet who doesn't hear this and know IMMEDIATELY what it's from.

Best Original Song: This one's a toss up. I honestly didn't like Tangled all that much, but since it's Disney and people have been raving about it, it might have a chance to win. I doubt Gwenyth Paltrow's Crazy Heart-lite will be able to win in this category, and Toy Story already won a ton of song awards back when the first one came out. I'm going to go ahead and say Toy Story 3 on this one, just for nostalgia's sake.

Best Costume Design: The King's Speech has some brilliant and amazingly well done costumes. The same could easily be said for True Grit, but since the former seems to have more pull this year, I'm going to go with that.

Best Art Direction: Inception. Hands down.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Here we're getting into the larger categories that will take up most of the column inches in newspapers the Monday after. This one's a tough one considering there are a number of fantastic contenders for the little gold man. In my opinion, though, nothing beats Aaron Sorkin's adaptation that was The Social Network, though the Coens' True Grit comes close.

Best Original Screenplay: The King's Speech, no question. David Siedler started it something like 40 years ago, and basically had to wait for the Queen Mother to die until he could finish it, and that's the type of story the Academy salivates over. Not that it doesn't deserve it, but in this case, the odds are clearly weighted in its favor simply because of the obstacles in bringing the film to the screen.

Best Foreign Film: I was amazed to see Tilda Swinton's I Am Love shafted in this category, and as that's the only foreign film I've seen this year, I don't really feel qualified to pick one in this category. I'm thinking, though, with Javier Bardem getting a best actor nod for Biutiful, that it may have more pull with the Academy.

Best Animated Feature: Come on, do I even have to say it? Toy Story 3 will win.

Best Supporting Actress: This is the one acting category I'm most unsure about. Young newcomer Haliee Steinfeld really deserves to be in the best actress category, but apparently the Academy wouldn't know what a leading female role would look like if it stood in front of them with a shotgun - which it did in True Grit. There's a lot of talk surrounding Amy Adams and Melissa Leo from The Fighter, but I, along with Roger Ebert, think this will result in a split in the vote, allowing Steinfeld to take home a statue, albeit one that reads the wrong category name.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale has been shafted by the Academy a number of times, and this will finally be his year. The one that could beat him is Australian Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech. Jeremy Renner is really fantastic in The Town (and he is that movie's only nomination) but it would be a miracle for him to pull out a win. As much affection as I have for Jeremy Renner, I think Bale will win.

Best Actress: Natalie Portman. No. Question. This role had Oscar written all over it, and she lived up to the hype. And it's well-deserved. Despite having this scene on her acting resume, Portman has proved herself to be a brilliant young actress, and Black Swan is a masterpiece performance from her.

Best Actor: It's his year. And if you have to ask who "he" is, you must be living under a rock. I'm talking about the man who can really wear a sweater, the man who is finally breaking out of the typecast romantic comedy roles he's had for ages, the man who should have won last year for A Single Man, the man whose British accent makes women melt even when he's talking about the most banal of things. Yes, Colin Firth. As much as I love and adore Jesse Eisenberg's performance in The Social Network, as much as Jeff Bridge's was enjoyable as The Dude Redux in True Grit, as much as I like looking at James Franco, I believe Colin Firth rightfully deserves this Oscar. If you haven't seen The King's Speech yet, you must do so just to watch how he puts every little bit of his facial muscle together into accurately portraying a man struggling with a stutter. The gulps and the twitches and the terrified look in his eyes are so believable that when you hear him speak normally, you have to remind yourself that he doesn't actually have a stammer and is a very fluid speaker. I can't praise his performance enough, really.

Best Director: This award could easily go one of two ways. Tom Hooper won the Director's Guild Award for The King's Speech, and 90% of the time, the winner of the DGA goes on to win Best Director. But, Darren Afronosky or David Fincher could slide in for an upset, but the possibility of that is highly unlikely. I want Fincher to win for The Social Network, just as I want Afronosky to win for Black Swan. But realistically, Hooper will take it home for managing to churn out a film that fits everything the Academy adores.

And finally! Best Picture: This one's a hard one. I want Black Swan to win, but I don't think it'll happen. It is, truly, a masterpiece of film and one of those that you think about for weeks after you leave the theater. The same thing goes for The Social Network - as soon as I finished watching it, I wanted to go back to the beginning and watch it again - I've seen it multiple times since, and Sorkin's writing combined with Fincher's direction and the performances of everyone on the cast makes it like West Wing on steroids with college students. It's profoundly engaging, exciting and interesting, and does a great job of capturing the zeitgeist of this generation.

But, that's not what the Academy's always about doing. So while I think The Social Network has a chance to pull out an upset, and while I would love for Black Swan to take home the gold, I have to, begrudgingly, hand this one to The King's Speech. I say begrudgingly because while I loved the film, it was also very much Oscar bait, and very typical safe fare for the Academy. It's brilliant and moving and engaging, but at the end, I want to say it's just a film. It's a good film, but it's like Titanic 14 years ago: It's good, sure, but I don't feel like I learned anything from it that I couldn't have predicted learning just from seeing a trailer. It's missing that extra oomph that I believe both Black Swan and The Social Network have. That said, the climate is against me, and it'll be The King's Speech that takes home the win.

So there you have it: My official predictions and ideas about The 2011 Academy Awards. They air at 7:30PM (CST) on ABC, so be sure to tune it. And feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments.

Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record on this blog. I get going on the ideas of not mis-imagining people, and remember that your neighbor is fundamentally and completely human, just like you and just like me. Often, I feel like I'm just repeating myself over and over in different ways because that is what my fundamental philosophy comes down to: recognizing that when Jesus said to "love your neighbor as yourself," he meant that your neighbor was not just the person whose dwelling was next to you, but that your neighbor is every single person you meet on every single day, and loving them means remembering that they are human beings. But I've slowly been realizing that this means, even so, much much more.

The "as yourself" has always been a little confusing, because "loving oneself" is usually interpreted as a narcissistic "me me me" sentiment. We don't want to say that we "love ourselves" because that gets interpreted in weird and twisted ways - the picture I get is a tan jock in a sport coat with perfectly white straight teeth and perfect hair smiling as he puts on sunglasses and says to himself in the mirror: "Hello, you sexy beast." Or, y'know, Jack Donaghy.

And I think, to some extent, that's the picture Western culture has ingrained in my generation - loving yourself means indulging. It means looking your best at every moment. It means getting Starbuck's, watching Snooki on TV, and basically being a self-indulgent jerk because "If you don't love yourself, who will?"

And I think that's infected our rhetoric in the church. It's all about what you can do to draw closer to Christ, how you can go to that poor country and help the brown people, how you can improve yourself by reading the Bible everyday, how you can grow in understanding.

And those are, in some respect, good things, in moderation. It is important to make selfish decisions once in awhile.

But I think we've also inserted a few words between the "as yourself" in Jesus' statement. He is not, contrary to popular reading, saying "as you love yourself." No, he's saying "as yourself."

Here's how I like to read it: "Love others as though they are a part of you."

We focus too much on parsing the statement into the two separate bits, which I think is a failed interpretation. Separating the sentence into "Love your neighbor" and "as yourself" makes it far too easy to focus on one instead of the other - how can I love my neighbor if I don't love myself first? And then we end up back at square one, concentrating on our own lives and improving our own lot, and putting loving our neighbor in the secondary position because if we don't know how to love ourselves, then how can we love our neighbor in any meaningful way?

But if we're putting ourselves first, we're not loving our neighbor. We're loving ourselves, and our neighbors are an afterthought. They are still this "other" being that is worthy to receive our love once we have our stuff figured out.

But let's put it a different way: Our neighbors are us - by loving them, we love ourselves.

I never feel as alive as I do when I forget who I am.

Everyone knows those moments - when something totally earth shattering happens that causes you to redefine how you see the world around you. It could be something as simple as realizing that you like a food you previously thought inedible. It could be as big as your brother and his wife having a baby. It could be sitting down on the train in India and realizing that "they" are just as concerned about the things you're concerned about - that "they" like to play cards, or "they" enjoy reading Sherlock Holmes as much as you do.

And then you realize, slowly but surely, that the divide between us and them is being chipped away. We can never, really, live life as another person. I am the sum of my experiences to a great extent - South Dakotan, highly educated, unable to remember a time when I couldn't read and write, a world traveler, someone who gets an incredible, inexplicable joy out of being able to put words together in a meaningful manner - and therefore can never be another person than what I am.

The same goes for every single person we encounter in life - they are the sum of everything they've experienced and lived.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes in his famous poem about Homer's Ulysses: "I am a part of all I have met; / Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough / gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades / for ever and for ever when I move."

I am a part of all I have met.

In this poem, Ulysses is an old man reflecting on his life, his past, and deciding to go out for one last big adventure - leaving his young son in charge of his kingdom, and basically abandoning his wife and family. It's at the same time inspiring and disheartening, but every time I read it, I find myself more inspired than saddened. It seems that Ulysses knows exactly what's up when it comes to The Other - when it comes to realizing who you are in relation to others.

Who I am and who you are is a fluid, ever changing, vastly diverse complexity that defies simple explanation. When we say to people "you are the poor and I am the rich, and I will help you out of your situation," we deny their complexity, and subsequently, shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to loving our neighbor.

We are not separated into neat little boxes of us and them. There is not "the poor" and there is not "the rich," though these categories may make political discourse easier to digest in soundbyte mode (unless you're Rand Paul - then the idea just gets confusing).

There is only us. There is only a vast community of people, intertwined and working together to somehow become better, as a community. As a people. As an "us."

I've never been much for individualism and independence, at least not in the sense that it means I put myself and my career above other people. My niece may only be a few months old, but she is already a part of me, and even more so a part of her parents. And I would be doing her a disservice if I chose to see the world as little separate units of people grouped into particular areas - here we have the poorest of the poor, here we have the somewhat developed world, here we have developed nations who have major problems, here we have the Europeans, the Americans, the Canadians, the Japanese, the Indians.

Forget who you are as an individual, and love your neighbor as you should - as though she is a part of you. Because she is a part of you, just as you, if you drop the pretense of "helping" and begin being a friend, will be a part of her.

"That which we are, we are
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Misimagining People: Revisiting the Concept

I've written before about the concept of imagining and mis-imagining people - namely, making them fit into the narrative that we think they should fit into - but I'd like to touch on it briefly here again, in discussion of something that came up in talks with a friend tonight.

There are many of you who know me and know my story involving my family, but there are still quite a few of you who don't. For that purpose, I'd like to give you a little background.

This is my brother (in the green shirt):

It should be fairly obvious, but in case you can't tell - he's disabled. Specifically, he has, in technical terms, Trisomy 21, or Down Syndrome. Down's affects development physically and mentally - long story short: he's handicapped.

MJ (short for Matthew Joseph) is 28 years old, and plans to go to Disney World for his 30th birthday in 2 years. He has a part time job doing housekeeping at a hotel in Sioux Falls, and his own apartment that is incredibly messy. He goes to South Dakota Achieve - a post high school center for disabled people in Sioux Falls - in the afternoons, and in the evenings and on weekends, he is active in Special Olympics.

He's also a pretty normal human being. He gets angry - particularly at me - and he can understand when he's being insulted. He worries about things, especially when plans are going to deviate from his normal routine. He'll call my parents just to ask about how their cat is doing in the evening, and then call back again a few minutes later to make sure that Mom knows to pick him up in the morning. He makes incredibly lame jokes, and laughs at the funny things my Dad does. He's a pretty average man.

Growing up, people would ask me "What's it like to have a disabled sibling?" I never knew really how to respond to that question. Being the youngest of three, with MJ as the oldest, my other brother and I have never known anything different. MJ has always been there - it's almost like having a twin. I can't tell you about my experience with him because I don't know what it would be like to have two "normal" siblings.

But what I can tell you is what I've already said: He is a normal human being. He is capable, he understands, and he knows when he's done something wrong or right. He does not spend his entire life uncorrupted from the world in this little hazy bliss of ignorance. He even votes, though I myself had doubts about whether or not he was casting a vote just to please dad. But that may be a place where even I have underestimated him.

There's a pervasive tendency in society to expect total strangers to conform to our preconceived narratives of who people are - as wrong as they may be, we expect certain things when we see certain looks or behaviors, and part of the beauty of human experience is letting people surprise us.

But there seems to be one group that is consistently left out of that recognition and changing of the narrative is that of disabled people. There's a particularly insidious narrative that disabled people are "innocent," they are "angels," they are these "gifts from God who are able to speak clearly to a situation because they don't have a filter." They're our "little buddies," and "like the younger sister we never had." If there's one group we consistently fail to treat as human beings, it's the handicapped.

Even as the sister of a disabled person, it's been a long period of me making the conscious decision to change my attitudes to see MJ as a capable adult. I'm still a little afraid to let him wander about on his own in public, even though he walks to the bus stop and takes the bus by himself almost everyday.

And I have noticed that my coddling him, my refusing to see him as capable, has had a negative effect. When he is around those who see him as this innocent, incorruptible angel who needs help on every little step, he will ask for help on every little step. But left to his own devices, he knows how to do everything we thought him incapable of.

Our narratives about others are not just mental blocks to ourselves and personal hurdles we need to get over in relating to others, but they are narratives that can shape how others perceive themselves.

When MJ is told that he is a capable person and can do what he's trying to do just fine, then he will do it. If I come in and insist that I help him, or that he can't do it, he will internalize that message. It's remarkably clear to see in my own brother, and it's been a remarkable process to work on helping to undo some of that.

When we tell people that they are incapable because of the narratives we see them fitting into, we do them a major disservice of not allowing them to discover on their own whether or not they are capable.

This doesn't just apply to the disabled. This applies to every single person we meet. The narratives we choose to tell ourselves every day can have negative effects on those surrounding us.

When we mis-imagine a person, we also encourage them to mis-imagine themselves. And that is a great tragedy.

The one place where competition is good.

There are days when the goodness of people makes my eyes well with tears. There are days when I am reminded that the world doesn't truly suck as long as there are good people in it living their lives with goodness. I try, quite often, to be one of those good people, but I see myself constantly outstripped by others in terms of goodness and generosity.

And that's a good thing.

Being the sister of two older brothers, competition is in my blood. There are definitely points when competition is welcome and beneficial, and the race to "do good" is one of those things.

I'd like to share, if I can, a couple of those stories of communities coming together to support those suffering in their midst.

We'll start with something that happened today.

I've talked a lot on this blog about John Green, one of my favorite Young Adult authors, and one half of the vlogbrothers, a Youtube "sensation," as it were.

The other half is his younger brother, Hank Green, who lives in Missoula Montana, is a computer-y guy, and runs a website called "Ecogeek" (I believe).

We also know, from this video, that Hank is dealing with a chronic illness, and has to take daily medication to deal with it. We also know that, already, this medication can get pretty expensive. Up until today, one of Hank's medications cost him $50/month.

Until today.

This morning (well, for me, it was this morning), Hank tweeted: "I very nearly fainted just now at the pharmacy when they told me my script cost is going from $50 a month to $620."

And it got worse: "I am seriously depressed and scared and angry. There's a scheduled increase to $670 in April. That's $8000 a year."

Now, Hank is lucky enough that he has a large following of supporters and fans who were immediately sympathetic to his plight. But, as most of his fans are teenagers or poor English teachers like me, there's not a lot that we could do except on an extremely short term basis. We felt bad, but we honestly didn't know how to even begin to approach the problem. Thankfully, Hank is also a responsible adult, and was discussing alternatives with his doctor.

And then tonight (for me), Hank tweeted this: "Un-credited, mysterious tweet, to unnamed savior who is helping me in a huge way that I cannot discuss. Thank you thank thank you."

Now, as vague as that is, the only real assumption we can make from it is that someone, somewhere, is helping Hank out with his sudden $8,000/year expense, and that is a wonderful thing. That is something that, as the Green brothers would say, is truly made of awesome.

Another story is one that unfortunately involves one of the places that is a scar on the Christian faith in America: Westboro Baptist. This church, for those of you unaware, likes to blame every dead soldier on America's pro-gay policies (to which I go, "what policies?" but that's another matter). They carry signs saying "God Hates Fags" and the like and protest at the FUNERALS of dead soldiers. They're pretty despicable.

And they make their money to travel to all these different places by suing people who protest against them, who infringe on their rights. As a result, there have been a number of creative and awesome protests against WBC.

But none of them beats the human wall.

In Weston, MO, WBC showed up to protest and found that the corner their permit allowed them to protest on was already taken up by literally hundreds of people. The people from the town and from surrounding communities came out in full force, and formed a barrier to keep the WBC protesters from getting anywhere near the funeral, blocking the view with giant American flags and forming a literal human wall.

If that's not the goodness of community coming together, I don't know what is.

True goodness shows up in communities coming together, in helping out a person you've never actually met, in being willing to reach out to help just one person. And it's those ideas that when others see them, they are spurned on to further goodness.

Being good, being someone who loves others and takes care of their neighbor doesn't have to wait until you have that right job or that right living situation. It can start today. It can start now. We hear a lot of those heroes, those people who went running toward the gunshots, those who wrestle the gunman to the ground, but there are people who everyday help the mother in the grocery line behind them pay for their groceries, who give up having a warm dinner so they can help the person next to them, who take the bus instead of a car so they can afford to help others. There are good people all around, and we can use the stories of others doing good to push ourselves on to doing more.

What good are you going to do today?

Soapbox: "Those who can't do, teach."

Every so often on the internet...Okay, ALL THE TIME, when I'm online and I read an article, I'll scroll down and read some of the comments. Most of the time, the comments thread (especially on sites like Huffington Post, CNN, and MSNBC) gets derailed off into left-right political bickering, even if the article is about a relative innocuous, bipartisan topic (it's amazing what people will bring into the discussion when it's completely irrelevant).

I suppose I do this partly out of habit, and partly to keep an eye on what certain discourse is happening. Occasionally, an astute commenter will point out something I hadn't noticed that changes the meaning of the piece. Sometimes, comments will reinforce my initial reaction to the piece, affirming that I hadn't read it incorrectly and that I am not alone in my opinion. Most of the time, debates are just really, really fun to read.

Today, however, I made the mistake of reading the comments on a Media Matters article about Glenn Beck's stance on the Food Safety Modernization Act that just passed Congress (and how he's misrepresented the debate, but that's old news). Media Matters debates usually end up being kind of fun, so I scrolled down and wasted ten minutes reading comments.

I became extremely upset and frustrated when one person began attacking one of the sources used in the article on the basis that he is a professor. This was seriously the person's argument: " An expert in macroeconomics is an expert in macroeconomics. When I get advice on running companies and profits I will get it from someone who is in that business. Not some professor." Later on, this same poster claimed that "A university professor ... has no real world experience."

Now, that's outrageous enough, but I don't ordinarily get so frustrated at random commenters on the internet that I want to write a blog entry about their argument. No, that desire came a few comments later, when this same person (who was arguing back and forth with some other commenters) commented, in defense of their argument, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

There is a large portion of people who have a propensity to whip out a cliched saying as though that satisfies the burden of proof, then sit back and watch their "wisdom" sink in. More often than not, it is greeted with a facepalm (see above). That poor argument style is nothing new. In fact, this is not the first time I have seen precisely this aphorism used in a debate (the first time was when it was used against me in a discussion of plagiarism in the classroom, of all things).

My problem is with the complete and utter falsehood of the statement itself.

To imply that a person's argument or professional opinion should be discounted because they are currently employed as a professor, and therefore aren't good at the "real world experience" of the thing they are teaching is to perpetuate an anti-intellectual, anti-education, and anti-elitist attitude.

Let's just look at the complete and utter inanity of such a statement: If you're being taught writing, for example, wouldn't you want to take a class from someone who knows how to write? If you're being taught research-oriented science, wouldn't you want information from someone who's actually got experience developing and testing various experiments? If you're learning to play guitar, wouldn't you want to be taught by someone who knows what they're doing? For goodness sake, if you're going to be taught theology, wouldn't you want someone who has experience as a pastor?

Fundamentally, in order to be good teachers, most teachers (especially at advanced level) have experience in that field, not just in the area of teaching. People have this misinformed conception of teaching that all it consists of is walking into a classroom, picking up a textbook, and reading from it, expecting the students to absorb information.

And maybe that is what many people experienced with teachers growing up. But that is not a good teacher.

A good teacher is someone who not only knows how to do the activity at hand, but someone who can explain it in the simplest terms possible.

A good teacher is someone who not only can do the goal of the class (whether it be writing, guitar, science, what have you) well, but knows enough to connect with a student when he or she is not understanding the concept, and be willing to go over it again and again.

A good teacher is someone who not only can tolerate shoddy workmanship, but is able to tell the student how to improve, and have that advice actually work.

A good teacher is someone who gives their time, their money, their sanity in order not to perfect their own craft, but to give others the skills they need to pursue that same craft.

A teacher is someone who takes it upon herself to lead others into the skills she enjoys, to put their improvement ahead of anything else, and to make sure that they leave her class better at the task than before they came in.

In short: "Those who can do well, and can pass on that skill to others should teach."

Being a professor does not discount a person's opinion about an issue, simply because they have chosen to teach about it. Indeed, being a professor reinforces the authority of that opinion because it usually means that they know their topic well, they have worked within that field in "the real world" and they are now passing on that experience to others.

Teaching is so often degraded, especially in American society, where teaching is one of the lowest paid professions. There's an anti-education strain in society that comes out virulently in debates about expert witnesses and expert knowledge. Let's face it: We've all met teachers who are fantastic doers, but terrible at passing on the wisdom that they have. But I have yet to meet a teacher who couldn't actually DO what they were teaching me - whether it be writing, pastoral ministry, shop class, journalism, historical study, debate...whatever.

Teachers don't teach if they can't do. On behalf of teachers everywhere, let's drop that stereotype once and for all, shall we? Those who can say that teachers can't do were never teachers (and probably shouldn't be).

New Projects and Other Stuff

I have a lot of new and exciting stuff going on, so I apologize for the lack of posts, and I apologize for the lack of cohesion in this one. This post is a sort of catch-all of things going on.

1. I have a new writing gig (thus my most recent absence from this blog). I am working with my friend Travis and his friend Justin on a theology and church culture online magazine, The BlackBird Press. I find the discussion that goes on in those comments to be stimulating, insightful, and interesting. The conversations that spring up are not ones that are easy to walk away from, and frequently challenge me, which is something every one needs once in a while. I have most recently written an article on John and Stasi Eldredge's Captivating, the female companion to John's quite famous Wild At Heart. It's an exegetical and gender-biased nightmare, and I am incredibly excited to have had the opportunity to write this article on it. Would you look at that: HERE IT IS.

2. I'm going home in a month! I will be flying into Sioux Falls at 10:20PM on December 20th, after 15 hours of traveling from Tokyo (not to mention the five hours it's going to take me to get up there by shinkansen [bullet train]). I am STOKED to see Sioux Falls again, and stoked to meet my niece for the first time! If you live in Sioux Falls, and want to get some coffee while I'm in town (from the 21st to the 2nd of January), shoot me an email or leave me a comment.

3. I have a lot of disordered thoughts about the TSA, the Korean conflict, the NZ mine explosion, DADT, Afghanistan policy...etc. Needless to say, a lot of different things concerning world politics have been pinging around in my head of late, but my mind hasn't settled on one singular thing to talk about, so, I apologize for lack of commentary on specifics. The TSA has, of course, been on the minds of most Americans, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping to have some sort of TSA story after my international traveling next month. But that's neither here nor there.

4. I've been reading a lot. Besides Captivating, I have a book on Arminian theology by Roger E. Olson (of Truett Seminary fame) headed my way, and I'm stoked about it. I'm also picking up All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy again, and hoping I can get past the first few pages this time.

5. Harry Potter VII Part 1 is out. I went to see it Friday night with a friend, and loved it. It was very faithful to the book, but still made me jump out of my skin at points, which is always a good thing. Very well done, and I'm glad I got to see it opening day (in fact, mine was just starting as midnight showings in America were finishing. How's that for cool?) Sioux Falls friends, I am definitely up for another viewing!

6. I have an absolutely adorable niece, and she has really awesome parents. I'll close today's post with a picture of my dear Vera and her tuckered out daddy. And no, not that Vera (fast forward to :41).

I hope this finds you well!

10 Reasons I'm a Terrible Evangelical

I discovered a new blogger tonight, Rachel Held Evans. Evans is a "liberal" Christian, an Arminian, and a social justice advocate. Needless to say, we have a lot in common. I was glad to discover her because she is writing as I would want to write. In that vein, one of her posts inspired me to do a similar thing over here.

10 Things That Make Me a Terrible Evangelical*:

1. I tend to swear a lot. In fact, I had to restrain myself from including in the title of this list the generally unacceptable synonym for poop. My mother would be shocked, but I'll be honest, I've got a bit of a potty mouth sometimes.

2. I have a love/hate relationship with Paul. I love what he did for starting Christianity off, but some of the things he says are just mind-blowingly strange and frustrating. Sometimes I even wonder if he might have been wrong about some stuff.

3. John Piper makes me violent. Maybe that's just a personal issue and not evangelicalism as a whole, but he is at the forefront of a lot of these things. When he blamed the tornado in Minneapolis last year on the ECLA meeting to discuss ordination for homosexual pastors, he kind of went in my "you're crazy and I will flip off the computer every time I read something you write just to relieve my frustration at the wrongness" box.

4. I really hate "Christian" movies and most of the movies I own are R-rated. It really sucks that "Christian art" is synonymous with kitsch, Thomas Kinkade, and just plain out terrible work. I much prefer the Coens, Danny Boyle Wes Anderson, and Christopher Nolan (all of which are notable in part for their frequently dark and twisted themes and humor) to say...Kirk Cameron, or that movie Rebecca St. James was in.

5. I cheered when Neil Patrick Harris and his partner adopted twins. Maybe it's the fact that I have several bisexual friends. Maybe it's just that I know a lot of gay people. Maybe it's my pro-adoption happiness outweighing any qualms about homosexual parents. Maybe it's the influence of MTV. Whatever it is, I really don't have a problem with you being allowed to marry and adopt kids if you want.

6. I read Harry Potter and other fantasy novels voraciously. I'm also against banning books. Then again, I read Stephen King's It when I was 13, so...

7. I really, really hate Contemporary Christian Radio. There was a time when it was all I would listen to. My music library on my computer, my CD player in my car, the music on my iPod were all tuned to contemporary Christian music - the likes of the Newsboys, Leeland, Audio Adrenaline, Everyday Sunday, Relient K, etc. Then I discovered Radiohead, and now CCM leaves a bad taste in my mouth, metaphorically speaking.

8. I like President Obama and will vote for him in 2012, especially if Palin or Gingrich are running against him. 'Nuff said.

9. I don't believe in the concept of Biblical inerrancy. I'm fine with Scripture being the Word of God and authoritative at that, but without error? Not so much. The four gospels are enough to show us the major problems with that.

10. John Green put it best: "There is no them. There are only facets of us." If anything is at odds with modern evangelical Christianity (see explanatory note below) it is this: the idea that there can be no us vs. them. That there is no them - there is no Other, at least not insofar as it is encapsulated in our fellow human beings. The things that we see in them that we like or dislike are reflections of what makes all of us human, and to set up any sort of us vs. them dichotomy is to tell a lie about what the group you are talking about is as human beings.


*This list is meant to respond to the general characterization of Evangelicalism in society, which tends to consist of conservative Republicans, Calvinists, and rigid fundamentalists. I realize that not all who self-identify as "evangelical" would agree with such a characterization, but, in my experience and impression, and I think in the impression of America in general, these sorts of things listed here tend to be litmus tests for belonging to the evangelical church as currently characterized. That said, this list is hyperbole for humorous effect, all except for point #10. That is, indeed, one major problem I have with both conservative evangelicalism in America and the neo-Calvinists (coughJohnPipercough) who are so influential in it. And I realize that some of you would argue that in attacking Evangelical America, I am myself setting up an us vs. them dichotomy, but I don't believe this is the case, as I am responding both to a caricature in the group and the general attitude I have encounter. My theology is not based on an us vs. them dichotomy - I still see "them" as fellow Christians, though "they" may not see me the same way. And therein lies the difference.