Christian comedy only the Devil could laugh at.

Through Itunes, I found a podcast in the category of "Christian comedy." I listened to the first episode I downloaded. The speaker had attended the funeral of an atheist. He pointed to the irony that some Christian songs were played at the non-believing man's funeral. He also pointed out how the selection of songs played at one's funeral has no bearing on one's salvation. Fair enough.

The problem was that it wasn't just ironic, but a source of great offense by the comedian. He even said, "Now don't go do that." I on the other hand can think of three reasons to praise God that songs with evangelistic content would be played at a funeral:

• The living persons in the room will hear the gospel
• The deceased may have arranged for it secretly because he was, all along, a believer.
• The deceased may have arranged for it secretly because he had a late-in-life conversion experience unknown to the comedian.

I might add that I've been to too many funerals in my life, and I don't think I've ever heard pop evangelical songs being played.

But the comedian didn't let it stop there. As part of the "comedy", he rewrote the song that was playing, "I Can Only Imagine". Instead of having some religious meaning the song was now about how boring it was to be a corpse pushing up daisies.

Martin Luther spoke of how there was a conflict in the church between two theologies, a Theology of Glory and a Theology of the Cross. I think that too much of what the TV preachers like Jerry Falwell were about was Theology of Glory. A Theology of the Cross might involve a focus on your sins and Christ's work. Too much of the preaching in a Theology of Glory is about either mocking folks who've chosen the wrong spiritual "football" team, or positing criticisms of the actions of your team as the cross you have to bear. Other folks could call these criticisms "calls to repentance."

Let's imagine the open-minded non-believer, and use male pronouns out of laziness. Last week, he heard the same group of Christians mock the idea that there was anything to repent of in how society treats the poor and planet-- there was only government regulation to fear. This week, he hears this song mocking atheists. What can be had but hardened hearts? The philosophical base starts out with the idea that the elect are to be protected from criticism. Hopefully, non-believers (and believers) reject this.

What would actual evangelistic Christian comedy sound like? Here's my take, and it starts out with C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity

For the trouble is that part of you is on his side and agrees with his disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want him to make an exception in your own case, but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behavior he cannot be good.

Is there a way that Jerry Seinfeld could read this chapter, maybe throw in some modern observations from NY City life, and have us all chuckling and tingling with fear and joy at the same time?

You see, the problem is that too many modern evangelicals have taken "greed and trickery and exploitation" off the radar screen of sin. That is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.

Health care debate

Here's a debate between Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

Jim is kneejerk liberal. Even though I probably agree with him 80% of the time, I often find him unconvincing. But even more disappointing is the response from the one allegedly picking up the mantle of evangelicalism and biblical conservatism. The only thing that Perkins brings to the table is a fear of government takeover. I think it's an unfortunate use of language, and could just as easily be applied to all the baby-step approaches to providing health care that Perkins was in favor of.

Is this the mantle of the 19th century, bible-believing evangelicals, the ones who were as much social reformers as evangelists?

Animated textures and spaceship construction.

Just goofing around.

The spaceships are made in povray. I got some interesting effects without calling any threshold in the blob.

The Truth Project

I had set up a "Truth 'versus' Love Project" about five years ago to decry the fact that so many Christians tell us we have to choose between theological orthodoxy and compassion, that a theology of the cross and a bleeding heart are incompatible.

Some conservative evangelicals have now set up The Truth Project to decry the fact that only nine percent of Christians have a biblical worldview. Interestingly, this statistic comes from a Barna Group Study, A Biblical Worldview has a Radical Effect on a Person's Life". It says that a half percent of Catholics hold to this view while still only 13% of evangelicals do. The article makes a fascinating read. The Barna Group study defines a biblical worldview:

For the purposes of the research, a biblical worldview was defined as believing that absolute moral truths exist; that such truth is defined by the Bible; and firm belief in six specific religious views. Those views were that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He stills rules it today; salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned; Satan is real; a Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with other people; and the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.

Hey, I got no problem with that! Interestingly the article goes on to mention a very strong correlation between the biblical worldview and positions on some touchstone conservative issues like abortion and gambling. (And as they are stated in the poll, I have no problem with either).

I've been very bothered by reports that evangelicals are more likely than the average American to oppose the moral positions of the human rights and humanitarian groups. Things like torture-- evangelicals are more in favor of it. They supported the war. Ronald Sider even wrote a whole book about this-- entitled Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. Sider pointed out how evangelicals did everything from getting divorced more often to being less likely to give to effective AIDS relief programs. This blog is full of "let me off the bus" stories about how the evangelical movement as a whole is not nice (but at the same time that you should be an evangelical).

Here's where it gets really interesting. I would LOVE to see the Barna group ask some more questions, like on torture. Who are these evangelicals that are more likely to support torture-- are they also the 8% of Baptists who have a biblical worldview? My earnest prayer, and sociological hunch, is that they are not. I bet that the small fraction who believe in the bible to Barna's degree are not the Sean Hannity and Glen Beck fans. That's because I think those pundits tap in to a nationalistic spirit that is very carnal and antinomian. I always wondered with The New York Post, with staunchly conservative political coverage, always had to have a bikini shot somewhere within the first three pages.

Barna, please do another poll. I'd love to meet and organize with Christians with a biblical worldview who are also nice people.

What an extremist, reverse-racist judge will mean to America

Seen at dailykos.com, from the SCOTUS blog:

"Other than Ricci, Judge Sotomayor has decided 96 race-related cases while on the court of appeals.

Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous. (Many, by the way, were procedural victories rather than judgments that discrimination had occurred.) Of those 9, in 7, the unanimous panel included at least one Republican-appointed judge. In the one divided panel opinion, the dissent’s point dealt only with the technical question of whether the criminal defendant in that case had forfeited his challenge to the jury selection in his case. So Judge Sotomayor rejected discrimination-related claims by a margin of roughly 8 to 1. (emphasis added)

Oh wait, um.....WS

Pixar's work finally slides into the Uncanny Valley

There's a hypothesis in animation called "The Uncanny Valley".. It states that something featuring live characters becomes more realistic, it for a while becomes more enjoyable. Then it suffers from something called The Uncanny Valley, where becoming more realistic makes it more creepy.


Pixar's work was always the coolest to me because I thought it successfully stood atop the "stylized" peak right before the Uncanny Valley.



*micro spoiler alert*

There are dog crowd scenes in the new movie, Up. They have one main character dog who is very stylized in construction (and featured in the TV commercials). But there is a plot conflict between this dog and a crowd of other dogs, many of which are much more photo-realistically constructed.

When there's one photo-realistic dog on the screen, emoting, it seems pretty cool. But there are scenes when they show a dozen, and because they are photorealistic, they look like zombies. I think there are both creepily over-acting dogs and creepily wooden dogs in a few scenes in the movie.

I've always bristled in animation when critics demand photorealism. I think that these critics don't understand the Uncanny Valley hypothesis.



Pixar UP Full Length Movie Trailer - HD High Quality - The best bloopers are here

Space Drama!

Here's a video from a young man who's just like me, in that he's making movies for the web and wondering if there's a business model in it. Only he's half my age, doing video, per se, and has talent. I found his blog very interesting.

Draft of IRTC pre-round entry

Draft of IRTC pre-round entry, originally uploaded by pterandon.

This isn't quite finished-- notably the hands of my main character are undergoing a major revamping. I was almost about to post this to the IRTC web page as it is.

Conservatives' one-sided citation of tradition makes tradition look bad.

On this Memorial Day, when we honor those who have sacrificed for our country, I've already seen on the internet two conservative Christians cite classic texts from church tradition to diss pacifism. As if the only lesson we get from the church historic, from church tradition, is that you shouldn't be a pacifist. I'll take the risk of offending my pacifist brethren by saying that I don't think there's a whole lot in the tradition of the church to support a pacifistic view.

At the same time, I think it's a bit tragic to take some of these classic texts and only quote one side of it. Not only have we received some very good reasons not to be pacifist, we've also learned why warmongering is bad. Sometimes the two lessons come in the same epistle or tract. To only quote one message is to reduce the witness of the church to propaganda. The saint who comes out to silence Caesar's critics, but doesn't challenge Caesar is something of a court prophet. All mouths are to be silenced, for all have disobeyed.

I've often seen conservatives quote Martin Luther's "Whether Soldiers, Too, Can be Saved." But they only quote the parts that attack pacifism. Here is one of them. (I'll also admit that this document from Luther helped me see the problems with pacifism):

The complete text of "Whether Soldiers" can be found if one searches the Table of Contents of this document at Google Books.

"As proof, I quote John the Baptist, who, except for Christ, was the greatest teacher and preacher of all. When soldiers came to him and asked what they should do, he did not condemn their office or advise them to stop doing their work; rather, according to Luke 3 [:14], he approved it by saying, "Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages." Thus he praised the military profession, but at the same time he forbade its abuse. Now the abuse does not affect the office. When Christ stood before Pilate he admitted that war was not wrong when he said, "If my kingship were of this world, then my servants would fight that I might not be handed over to the Jews" [John 18:36]. Here, too, belong all the stories of war in the Old Testament, the stories of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, David, and all the kings of Israel. If the waging of war and the military profession were in themselves wrong and displeasing to God, we should have to condemn Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, add all the rest of the holy fathers, kings, and princes, who served God as soldiers and are highly praised in Scripture because of this service, as all of us who have read even a little in Holy Scripture know well, and there is no need to offer further proof of it here. Perhaps someone will now say that the holy fathers were in a different position because God had set them apart from the other nations by choosing them as his people, and had commanded them to fight, and that their example is therefore not relevant for a Christian under the New Testament because they had God's command and fought in obedience to God, while we have no command to fight, but rather to suffer,endure, and renounce everything. This objection is answered clearly enough by St. Peter and St. Paul, who both command obedience to worldly ordinances and to the commandments of worldly rulers even under the New Testament [Rom. 13:1–4; I Pet. 2:13–14]. And we have already pointed out that St. John the Baptist instructed soldiers as a Christian tteacher and in a Christian manner and permitted them to remain soldiers, enjoining them only not to use their position to abuse people or to treat them unjustly, and to be satisfied with their wages. Therefore even under the New Testament the sword is established by God's word and commandment, and those who use it properly and fight obediently serve God and are obedient to his word.

At the same time, there are also some pretty resounding denunciations of rushing to war:

At the very outset I want to say that whoever starts a war is in the wrong. And it is only right and proper that he who first draws his sword is defeated, or even punished, in the end.

Wait until the situation compels you to fight when you have no desire to do so. You will still have more than enough wars to fight and will be able to say with heartfelt sincerity, "How I would like to have peace. If only my neighbors wanted it too!" Then you can defend yourself with a good conscience, for God's word says, "He scatters the peoples who delight in war." Look at the real soldiers, those who have played the game of war. They are not quick to draw their sword, they are not contentious; they have no desire to fight.

Let this be, then, the first thing to be said in this matter: No war is just, even if it is a war between equals, unless one has such a good reason for fighting and such a good conscience that he can say, "My neighbor compels and forces me to fight, though I would rather avoid it." In that case, it can be called not only war, but lawful self-defense, for we must distinguish between wars that someone begins because that is what he wants to do and does before anyone else attacks him, and those wars that are provoked when an attack is made by someone else. The first kind can be called wars of desire; the second, wars of necessity. The first kind are of the devil; God does not give good fortune to the man who wages that kind of war. The second kind are human disasters; God help in them!

Our conclusion on this point, then, is that war against equals should be waged only when it is forced upon us and then it should be fought in the fear of God. Such a war is forced upon us when an enemy or neighbor attacks and starts the war, and refuses to cooperate in settling the matter according to law or through arbitration and common agreement, or when one overlooks and puts up with the enemy's evil words and tricks, but he still insists on having his own way. I am assuming throughout that I am preaching to those who want to do what is right in God's sight. Those who will neither offer nor consent to do what is right do not concern me. Fearing God means that we do not rely on the justness of our cause, but that we are careful, diligent, and cautious, even in the very smallest details, in so small a thing as a whistle.

On this Memorial Day, let us honor and remember those who served, even those who died in wars we may regret undertaking.

Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama (LOC)

Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

This beautiful image is from the Library of Congress' Walker Evans collection at Flickr. Taken in 1936.

It is interesting that one could apparently make a living selling fish caught from rivers. Just one potential setting to remember for my time machine, when I get one.