This past Friday at a Sunni mosque in West Philadelphia I met a man we’ll call Bob.

Bob came from the south, from Georgia, and like many southerners, he grew up in a small Baptist church. And unfortunately, like most of us, at some point he came of age and his church involvement ended for no apparent reason and certainly for all sorts of reasons at the same time.

One thing or another led Bob to Philadelphia, and after a while he came upon hard times which led to a lot of soul-searching questions. For a while he considered going back to church, in an effort to get his life back on track. One day, he stumbled upon Open Door Baptist Church and he took it as a sign from God that now was the time and this was the place, since his childhood church had the same name.

The next Sunday he attended this church’s morning service. In his sermon, the pastor shared with the congregation that one of his greatest fears is that his kids will find themselves “sitting next to a faggot on the school bus.” Bob thought silently about the fact that no one in this church knew who he was, and that there very well could have been others there that morning whose stories no one knew either. And if any of them were homosexuals, Bob concluded, they knew what they were doing was wrong and he was sure they had come to church specifically looking for hope, for peace, for healing.

But now they had been labeled, condemned.

That day Bob decided he didn’t need the church. And from what I gather, he has never been back. He told me he decided he could pray and maintain his relationship with Jesus without the church getting in the way.

Time passed and again Bob hit a rough patch and found himself without a place to rest his head. He approached a friend for help and this friend took him in under his roof until Bob could get on his feet again.

This friend was a Muslim. And over meals and other shared experiences he shared his faith with Bob.

Bob wasn’t too sure about the whole Muslim thing, because while it sounded compelling and he wasn’t exactly happy with his life as it was, he knew that if he came to believe that Mohammed was God’s final prophet, his relationship with Jesus would come to an end, and he wasn’t ready to let that happen. But then he read a tract that his friend had given him, explaining how Jesus fit in the line of prophets that culminated in Mohammed. After reading this, Bob said he prayed that God would show him what was true - was Jesus actually God’s son, and therefore our Lord and Savior? Or was Mohammed the final prophet, and Jesus just a lesser one? He knew both couldn’t be true.

Bob came to the conclusion that the Islamic teaching was true. But he wasn’t ready to become a Muslim because he wasn’t wild about the idea of giving up alcohol and praying five times a day and fasting during the month of Ramadan. The local imam, however, told him it was better to be a sinful “one who submits” (that is, a Muslim) than a mostly upright one who doesn’t.

And that was it for him. Bob became a Muslim.

So what am I left to make of all this? Well, first off, I am one of those old-fashioned, close-minded people who still believes in absolutes, so the wishful thinking idea that all mutually exclusive roads lead to the same place is unavailable to me. Meanwhile I am also a North American twentysomething in the early years of the twenty-first century, so I have postmodern tendencies which lead me to the new-fangled, open-minded conclusion that there are plenty of things we can (can’t afford not to) learn from even those we most disagree with. Then somewhere deep inside, all too often hidden beneath layers of pride and selfishness and comfort, there’s a Minor Prophet in me, pleading and screaming at the top of my lungs that it is not okay for the church to keep folks like Bob from finding abundant life.

Because finally, I am a follower of Jesus Christ and committed member of his Church, who believes that love is paramount. And it is unloving to be indifferent.

“I am a Christian… But I am also a human being living in the 21st century, struggling with a lot of brokenness — my own, as well as the world’s. I don’t want to use the term ’Christian’ to shield me away from the suffering or evil that I see, or to escape in some nice ghetto where everyone thinks the same.” - Makoto Fujimura (full article here)

Related good stuff:

Christian Vision Project: asking big questions about culture, mission, and the gospel
International Arts Movement: engaging the world that is; creating the world that ought to be

In Neil Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves To Death it becomes clear that he considered television not only the bane of his existence, but also one of the most culturally destructive elements of the world in which he lived. The book is framed by the prophecies of George Orwell in 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right” (pp. xix-xx).

As one who often goes days, if not weeks, without watching television, it is easy for me to sympathize with Postman as he laments the decline of the age of “print” and decries the rise in “show business” as the sole forum for public discourse, but I’ll leave you to make your own conclusions about his arguments.

Obviously, when reading a more-than-two-decade-old book about what was then the current condition of our culture, it becomes clear that things have changed. I am not sure that television has the same control on society that it did in 1985, and I’d attribute that mostly to the Internet.

In some ways, the Internet is a return to print, but in other ways, it has taken television further than ever before. So I am left wondering what Postman would have to say about the Internet and its hold on us all: should the World Wide Web be considered synonymous with soma?

I am happy to announce that I am going into the motivational poster business. To kick off the series, I decided to begin with a photo from the crocodile farm I visited in Vietnam last fall, the same one in which we threw cashews at the heads of these crocs and walked away tingling.

Many years ago I used to play baseball now and then on the weekends with a bunch of guys at a field a few blocks from our house in Guatemala City. Among these was Jorge, a big dude who was our sandlot’s version of Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez. When he stepped to the plate, one or two of us in the outfield would climb through a small hole in the chain link fence and go wait out on the street, which served as a sort of McCovey Cove for us.

Jorge once went missing for a few weeks, and when he returned he was wearing a Dodgers hat and told us he’d been visiting his brother who was playing in the minor leagues in the Dodgers farm system. Hugo, I would go on to learn, was the first (and as far as I know, still the only) Guatemalan player drafted to play professional baseball - discovered, as it happens, by the same dude who found Fernando Valenzuela in Mexico years before.

In one of my Google-search attempts to follow Hugo’s career several years ago, I found an article from a Guatemalan newspaper, and since my Spanish was rusty-to-nonexistant at the time, I plugged it into one of those free online translators and what it gave me was nothing short of amazing:

Hugo Pivaral lit up with its curves and straight before the observers of the Yankees, Sailors, Gigantic and Mets, during the session of lanzamientos of yesterday in the diamond. The activity gathered to near 100 spectators, as well as to elements of press written, radio and television. The spectacle lived with intensity and all coincided in affirming: “I Hope Hugo achieve to go Large Leagues”.

“The adrenalina rose me al most maximum”, said Pivaral al moment of performing the exercises of straightenings. “In ten days will be known if I go or not to some of those equipment. I have confidence in achieving the dream of being in the great tent of the béisbol American”, he commented. The curves, to 77 miles for hour, and the quick balls, to 91, they left the sensation of security in the lanzador. “I felt myself well. Better than when did the first test. That it gave me confidence”, indicated finally.

Robert Engle, observer of the Sailors, of Seattle, of the American League, of the béisbol of the Large Leagues, of United States, recognized that the lanzamientos you done by the Guatemalan of 25 years, Hugo Pivaral, they were “good”.

There were hopes that he would continue the long line (five years at one point) of Dodgers who won the Rookie of the Year award, but he apparently got injured, which set him back, and unfortunately, just last year tested positive for doping at a Latin American tournament, though it seems there is some debate as to whether the positive test results were because of treatment he had received for his injury.

I’m not sure what became of Jorge. But someone of the same name appears to be the drummer in a Guatemalan nu-metal band called Disel.

Two guys are sitting on the twin black pleather chairs in the coffee shop. One has his feet kicked up on one of the metal chairs with a yellow seat cushion. The other guy also has a chair pulled over in front of him, which he uses to collect the slivers of fingernail he apparently forgot to clip off this morning.

Newspaper Guy occasionally grunts and lets out a monosyllabic laugh in a cynical, “figures” sort of way. Nail Clipper Guy, without looking up from his task at hand, then says what, but he says it without the voice inflection at the end like you’d expect in a question, instead uttering the one-word sentence as if it ends with a period. Newspaper Guy then summarizes/editorializes the latest article he has just read, about hassles with city government or the fellow who got arrested for dog fights or the disabled, elderly woman who died in her home after the power company shut her electricity off.

“Tell you what I’d do if that lady was my mom,” asserts Nail Clipper Guy as he slides the clippings into his left hand, “I’d sue that company for every penny they’re worth.”

“You’d have to find a lawyer,” mumbles Newspaper Guy without averting his eyes from the paper.

“I’d have no trouble there, believe me. Lawyers would do it for free. They’d line up. That’s what they did with my injury. They knew they’d win, big time. And they did.”

Nail Clipper Guy gets up with the clippings collected in his palm and makes his way to the trash can where he drops them in and wipes off his hand, then returns to his seat.

Newspaper Guy folds the paper in half and tucks it under his arm. “Someone just went in the bathroom. I’m watching the door and as soon as it opens I’m going in. Then I think I’m gonna go home and go right to sleep… after I take a shower.”

“Aren’t you going to play with your cat at all? Do you sleep with your cat?”

“Nah, man, I throw her out when I go to bed. I’m allergic.”

“Why do you have a cat in the first place, then, if you’re allergic?”

“Well, I’m attached.”

“When did you first get allergic?”

“Oh, I was allergic since day one.”

“So what happens when you spend time with her?”

“My eyes get puffy and itch like crazy. And I can’t stop sneezing. It’s bad.”

“Wow… well, I guess I’d have a hard time getting rid of her too. I know what it’s like to be attached. My cat is my best friend in the whole world. Damn, only real friend I got.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you this. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I see is my cat. She’s always there…

[pause]

…but I’m allergic.”

In this photo, Sara Isabel ponders the deeper meaning of life. Pretty impressive, considering it is her first day on the planet. Whether these ponderings occurred in English or Spanish is unknown.

August 28 can’t come fast enough.

A couple of years ago I remember hearing about some guys who made the trek from South Africa to Egypt by motorcycle and had completed their journey through that rather tumultuous continent when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Cairo, thereby killing, among others, one of the four guys who made the journey. Read about the attack here.

While perusing books at Barnes and Noble earlier this week I came across one that, as it happens, was written by Erik Mirandette, the brother of the rider killed, who was also seriously injured in the attack. The book is titled The Only Road North: 9000 Miles of Dirt and Dreams. In further evidence that Google is taking over the world, GoogleBooks has a scan of the complete book here.

The thing that most stood out to me was actually at the very end, where Mirandette says that had he known beforehand how all of this would have turned out, he never would have done any of it: “I would have without a second thought or hesitation thrown my destiny right out the window and preserved the comfortable life that I was so lucky to have. But I wasn’t given that choice. My choice was to either follow and believe, or not. I understood the risk; there were never any guarantees” (p. 296).

This brings to mind something my favorite writer Frederick Buechner once said: “It is one of life’s greatest mercies that it is not given to us to know the might-have-been of things.”

Because let’s be honest: we all want the easy road. If we are told that making a certain decision will result in a significant amount of suffering - emotional, spiritual, physical, whatever - we will make some other decision. We will, as Mirandette says, minimize the risks and throw away whatever it is that is to be gained by walking the difficult path laid out for us. And that is the real tragedy.

Losing your life isn’t the worst tragedy, after all. Wasting it is.

Background on Wikipedia.org

For more:
SaveDarfur.org
Evangelicals For Darfur
Darfur Scores
Darfur is Dying