Transformers Compared to the Transformer

Allow me to spin you a yarn…When I was but a mere boy I wanted nothing more than a Transformer, but as every other boy my age wanted one as well, they were very hard to get. My dad would come home from working very long hours at the furniture factory (where he ran a large metal press) and immediately turn around and go from toy store to toy store to look for one. One day he finally found one (he thought) and brought it home to me excitedly. Shock and horror. It was a Gobot. Sure it transformed and it was a cute little yellow VW bug, (the old kind not the new kind preferred by happy males) but the fact remained that it was not the real thing. I was not happy.

I would love to have a moral to that story above, like something about a fathers love and a boys ungratefulness, or how, if you believe the story from wired magazine then Optimus Prime is a Christ type and if that is so then a Gobot would be a demonic imitation like the Antichrist. But really I have no such application. Though you can feel free to draw your own message and meaning. You go all Derrida and deconstruct it or whatever. For the most part I just told the story to introduce what I think is a really interesting article from James Harleman. You can read it by clicking below.

Click Here I beg You!!!! It’s a Great Article

Oh Bishop :(

This from the Bishop of the Anglican Church in America…I’ll call her Kathy:

“Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?” “We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.”

Oh Kathy, Kathy, Kathy I love the God in a Box/that limits God argument…because frankly it is one of the stupidest arguments that I have ever heard. You are right it would be wrong to put God in our own box, this is what the Second Commandment is about. But to understand God in a way different than he has himself reveled to is not to remove God from any box, but rather to create a new box and a new god and again violate the second commandment. To say that Jesus is the only way to God is not to put God in a box, it is to understand God in the box that he has given us, through Christ and Scripture, the only real limit being in our ability to understand and accept it. One might argue against revelation, or against the Bible but one can not simultaneously claim to believe the Bible and to be a Christian and remove him from the Box of his own self disclosure in Scripture, to do so is to be an idolater and worshiper of false gods, not to mention calling Jesus a liar. And there is really no limit removed or boxing unconstrained if the people you seek to mollifiy are seperated from Jesus because the god you presented to them is not the God who exists. Which would you rather have, a fairy tale god who fit your sensibilites, because in fact you “unboxed” and created him, or a God who presented you with a box and a grid in which to understand him, worship him and follow him? I want a God who while, yes he does judge sin and does claim to be the only way, is still loving, still the hope of the world and above all is real because a fake god no matter how I concieve him cannot save me from me.

The Jesus of Suburbia…

So I was going to post more quotes but it seems that I have left my copy of the book at urgent care, where I was with yet another sick son …ear infections should be illegal. Oh well I will go back for it tomorrow. I did read a similar quote today from a guy from the 1800′s about adandoning everything to follow Jesus radically… and we thought we invented it in this generation Here:

“…Even where these are not entirely neglected, they do not always take the place they are meant to have—that first place that makes everything, the dearest and best, secondary and subordinate to the work of helping and blessing men. A reckless disregard of everything that would interfere with God’s will and commands, a being jealous with God’s jealousy against sin, a witnessing and a fighting against it at any sacrifice —” Andrew Murray

The Jesus of Suburbia…

So I am reading a book by a guy named Mike Erre called “Jesus of Suburbia”…It rocks. Over the next few days I will be giving quotes.

“Risk is inherent in faith. Risk and Faith cannot be divorced”

“This is one of the reasons we settle for the mundane Jesus of suburbia; he is predictable and safe. This way of living steals the life God offers, even with all of it’s cost. We settle for the dull and drab, never daring great things for God and never seeing God do great things.”

“I want my children to grow up understanding that life with Jesus is more than just being nice, or trying not to cuss and get drunk because “that is what good Christians do.” I want my children to be so compelled by the real Jesus that they are willing to stand with him, giving their lives to his revolution, not in order to be religious but because the is simply no more exhilarating way to live. I want my kids to see my wife and me as revolutionaries who subvert the dominant belief systems of the world, not out of religious obligation but in wholehearted response to the person of Jesus.”

Word. I think that last one may be the purpose statement that my wife and I would choose for ourselves as parents. All of these came just form the first chapter and there are more amazing quotes as well. I will post them later.