This past week, Texas Tech football head coach Mike Leach was suspended over allegations that he shut a member of his roster, redshirt freshman Adam James, in an electrical shed following James’ complaint of concussion-type symptoms. This morning, before his lawyer could seek an injunction in a Texas court allowing Leach to coach in the Red Raiders’ Alamo Bowl contest against Michigan State, he was fired.

Tomorrow, 31 December, he was to be due an $800,000 bonus per the conditions of a five-year contract between Leach and the university signed this past February. Amongst the details therein, if Leach were to be terminated, he would receive a perennial $400,000 buyout per year remaining on his contract. Tech remains on the hook for what would appear to be $1.6M through 2014.

Adam James is also the son of Craig James: former SMU running back from their glory (read: pre-”death penalty”) years of the early 1980s, New England Patriot and, since 2003, a part of the ABC (then, in a dogfight with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for most awkward name, ESPN on ABC, now just ESPN) sportscasting team.

When the story broke, ESPN eagerly sought James for comment and insight into the story. The interview, and edits thereof, have been broadcast during the myriad editions of SportsCenter as long as the story has had legs (which, at the time this is being written, continues.)

The fact that ESPN would go to Craig James for analysis of the story,  including Leach’s firing, and not run any interviews from the other side is, of course, highly questionable. Further, a cell phone video of Adam James’ predicament has ended up in the hands of ESPN, presumably via Craig. Whether or not Leach did or did not “abuse” a player is irrelevant to the matter at hand; ESPN’s willingness to abandon journalistic ethics in favor of running less-than-fair coverage of matter which directly pertained to a member of ESPN’s on-air staff is nothing short of embarrassing.

ESPN has appeared to go out of its way to throw competition, or those who would either those who would go after personalities, or those who would transgress against the brand in-house, under the bus. When then-FOX baseball analyst Steve Lyons made a series of politically incorrect statements on-air that led to his dismissal from the network, ESPN gladly helped bury Lyons’ career by covering the story with salacious prejudice. When Harold Reynolds was sued over allegations of sexual harassment in 2006, he was efficiently and effectively scrubbed from all ESPN properties on air and anywhere else without much more than a word. Just this year, when more allegations of sexual impropriety arose against another MLB analyst, Steve Phillips, he was swept away with nary a word, until the internet caused a boomerang effect, forcing ESPN to run minimal coverage on the matter. When a stalker published video of a nude Erin Andrews on the internet, not only was Andrews essentially sequestered for months, her public appearances have been greatly curtailed and broadcast presence mutated into a series of extreme close-ups and other awkward moments in live broadcasting. ESPN also was unafraid to go after the story, using the clout of sister outlet ABC News and the full power of a media conglomerate to destroy the defendant.

Add in the past litany of advertising cross-promotion between ESPN and other brands owned by The Walt Disney Co., as well as heresay of ESPN protecting lucrative interests with sports entities such as the NFL, and ESPN’s fiscal prudence and journalistic integrity have appeared to butt heads throughout this past decade (which, as an editorial aside, ends next year, not this.)

And now, ESPN can be easily viewed as being complicit in helping to expedite Mike Leach’s termination, and likely subsequent crucifixion by the viewing public. ESPN is, by its own tagline admission, “the worldwide leader in sports”. And it has recklessly portrayed one of its own analysts, normally in the confines of an ESPN studio or stadium press box, as a somber victim in front of a black backdrop instead of covering a developing story. In its attempt to report the news, the network appears to have indirectly (or perhaps directly) assisted in creating news.

ESPN never acknowledged seeking out out Harold Reynolds or Steve Lyons for a statement or interview, nor did it appear to pursue a statement from Steve Phillips or his ex-lover, former ESPN production assistant Brooke Hundley. The last thing they wanted was to get any word from Andrews’ harasser, but Andrews went on to be interviewed by the friendly-to-ABC Oprah Winfrey. And now, all they seem to want are convoluted statements from Mike Leach’s attorney (the recordings of which broadcast on editions of SportsCenter 29 December, presumably to the confusion of all thanks to its sounding like a rambling, drunk youtube rant), Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance, whose job, like all heads of organizations, is to protect the image of the university as well as administrate, and an indignant father whobythewayalsohappenstoworkforthecompany.

The situationalist ethics of ESPN are maddening: if anything, they should have run the story on Leach, but absolutely refused to publish or broadcast remarks by an employee directly affected by the matter. They could have mentioned Craig James’s connection to the matter and left it at that. By including him, they have tossed any and all presumptions of objectivity out the window. And Mike Leach, regardless of what actually happened and whether or not his actions were inappropriate or illicit, is left with an impugned reputation.

[In the meantime, ESPN has no problem eulogizing the coaching legacy of Florida coach Urban Meyer, who reportedly resigned over concerns for his health and family, while having no second guesses or issues with correcting the story without batting an eye when Meyer allegedly changed his mind and decided to take an extended leave from the school.]

Texas Tech, too, appears to throw the concern of an employee, in a sports environment where whispers of coach-collegian abuse is too close to the public conscience for comfort, under the bus. Granted, Leach’s blood money likely comes from donors and not from the university’s coffers or Texas taxpayers, it remains that due diligence was sacrificed in favor of appeasing a player–one whom some allegedly likened to a malcontent or a primadonna–tied closely to a media entity that happens to be one of the major gatekeepers of public awareness of teams and schools. Some hands in Lubbock are no less clean, and perhaps dirtier, than the medium chiefly reporting the developments in Lubbock. All this after Tech went out of its way to lure and embrace legendary curmudgeon and basketball coach Bob Knight out of Hoosier-induced retirement in 2001 (to think some members of the current football roster claim that Leach didn’t know how to deal with people!), and continues to accept contributions to Knight’s endowed library fund.

Nevertheless, ESPN has committed a grave lapse in judgment by covering the Leach matter the way it has. What’s worse is that this is not the first time it has happened, and a conscious viewing public knows it will likely not be the last. When even sports media shows blatant subjectivity, one can easily see how it is also a microcosm it is of journalism as a whole in America at the figurative and popular end of the decade.

In short, advocacy journalism is not journalism, it is activism–and it is not black and white, but yellow.

This week, USA Today published a story about the burgeoning McChurch model of evangelical Christianity, Gannett religion writer Cathy Lynn Grossman’s “Multi-site churches mean pastors reach thousands”. To work within the language, as multimedia “ministries” have proven over the decades, man’s reach–even for the man of the cloth–exceeds his grasp.

Churches, taking a cue from both the hostile takeover/merger model of the early 90s, and the late 90s-early 00s trend of rapid market saturation (see Kreme, Krispy, and Coffee, Bad Seattle), have undertaken efforts to either expand into campus or satellite models or takeover older, struggling church organizations, bringing them under one umbrella. This is no cooperative effort, it is assimilation of resources by ambitious church organizations. The silence of denominatioal entities regarding such strategies is tantamount to tacit acceptance. After all, most evangelical movements have stalled out in recent years, overt expansion efforts have tanked and the cultural tide continues to turn against Judeo-Christian values.

What’s more, evangelicals, who have in recent memory voted along conservative lines, would likely complain about federal bailouts and federally-orchestrated corporate takeovers during the financial crisis while failing to see that what is happening right now in Christianity is the exact same thing. (In a line of thinking I hope to explore here in the near future, fundamentalist Christianity and neo-liberal politics make for strange bedfellows.)

My point is simple: this is not a healthy development here in the twilight days of Western Civilization. Rather than facing self-inflicted existential problems and addressing the legitimate disconnect between communities of faith and surrounding communities, church leaders have opted for taking over smaller, vulnerable churches. Evangelicals, frankly, are cannibalizing themselves.

And for what? Over what?

First, it’s obvious that the cardinal virtue of modern Christianity is not compassion or religious fervor, but efficiency. This isn’t even a recent trend, as long as Christians have turned to media and broadcasting to get their message out (and I would add, ironically, minimized) we have implied that what really matters to us is our ability to get as many people to view or hear our noise. These McChurches have even re-engineered their auditoria or sanctuaries to accommodate this new pundit model of preaching, galvanizing the importance of populism in a time when populism is already well-entrenched. So, each week, a talking head entertains and informs, while underling pastors take on the messy burden of interacting with people and running the day-to-day operations of a local satellite/campus. Neil Postman would be sharpening his critical carving knives.

Even then, actual populist influence is marginal at best, when church consumers don’t even have to go to church and can subject themselves to as many pulpit pundits as they wish by television, podcast, web stream, radio or blog.

This is hardly a grassroots effort or a groundswell of democratic revival. It is creating churches too big to fail, and crushing the import of the long-held tradition of the sovereign local church; is it then no real surprise that a ‘fellowship’ like the Assemblies of God is making troubling strides toward full denominationalism while its larger churches are taking over floundering or failing churches? It’s ecclesiological fascism, no different than what is happening in Washington in regard to current economic policy.

More bothersome to a gadfly like yours truly, the margin of error in regard to quality teaching of the scripture is slimmed significantly. When the number of voices goes down, so does the correlative buffer (while Grossman doesn’t address this point, the numbers in her work back up the analysis here). Given our propensity for exercising our noetic effects of sin either at or away from the pulpit, the damage caused by even a little leaven with a much larger batch of dough is far too risky for my comfort, and should be for any thoughtful, sincere believer. If a giant like Lehman Brothers was brought to its knees because of some seemingly insignificant bad decisions, or Steve and Barry’s (RIP) or Krispy Kreme oversaturates the market, spreads their supply chain too thin or hits any stretch of bad economy, well, we see what happens. Lehman is gone, Steve and Barry’s is gone, and seven-year-old KK storefronts are either boarded up, torn down or turned into bad Mexican restaurants. (Hey, at least many of these satellites meet in movie theaters or hotel conference centers! Some vote of confidence in the quality of your product.)

So the church becomes even more static and monolithic, more subculturized and less dynamic in a race to see who can impress each other the most at conferences and webinars for others to plagiarize. All the while, the gospel is eschewed in favor of flashy ‘worship services’, video announcements and PowerPoint, funny pastors who tell a bunch of stories and tie it together with a moral that may or may not be actually scripturally authentic.

(Ironically, many church plant efforts are exercises in the exact same thing in an effort to establish themselves. Could it be that the plant wants to be, in all its pubescent glory, treated like a grown-up? Or that these mega-McChurches never matured past their piss-and-vinegar years of adolescent indignation? Are these questions that we particularly care to answer?)

Like Christian television that markets itself as evangelization while primarily catering to people already in the niche, the franchise church is less about the former than it is about centralizing the latter. The aforementioned Assemblies of God, in its “Decade of Harvest” initiative, failed in many ways, but was proud to tout hitting the goal for churches opened in the 1990s. The celebration was unjustified, though, by the fact that more churches closed than they managed to open, creating a net loss.

Proving Santayana’s adage true, they’re doing it again, this time with unbelievably raised stakes.

1) In a down economy.

2) With a federal government desperate to find new revenue streams to exploit.

3) Amongst a people who are increasingly disinterested in Christianity in favor of democratic syncretism.

Exactly how is this a sustainable development in the history of the church? How is this any different than people running up their credit cards in the hope that the rapture will come and take them away from their obligations? Never, in the history of American Christianity, has the person, Christian and otherwise, been less important. Never has the Christian consumer been more catered to. Perhaps the two are not unrelated. As we embrace the values that make America rich, powerful and self-important (values that really have little to do with American ideals anyway), we alienate ourselves from the people we are called to reach with the gospel, as well as from the God whose gospel we proclaim.

If it is indeed the onset of winter of the Christian age, I suppose we ought to throw a party. It just so happens that it’s the Donner party. How fitting.

Grossman: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-12-17-1Amultichurches17_CV_N.htm

Like eight years ago, I’m up all night.

I was 19 years old and working on the college newspaper. It was pub (pub for publication, not for adult beverages; after all, we were good Assemblies of God Bible college students) night; we were working around the clock to crank out our debut issue. The system was causing problems, stories weren’t getting tied down, and tempers were starting to flare. It was about this time of the night that I ran over to a gas station to get coffee for the crew, in the hopes of starting a second wind.

Some of us lost our minds that night, but we were able to push the issue to print in the nick of time. Daylight was beginning to creep across the horizon in the Twin Cities, I was looking forward to sleeping. My head hit the pilllow in my down room around 6 AM. Delicious sleep.

At a time my body told me was far too soon to wake up, I heard a bunch of hubbub out in the suite area. I wanted them to shut up, I just needed to sleep. Then, Josh barged in my room and told me to wake up and mentioned something about the World Trade Center. I rolled over, too tired to understand what was happening.

Then it occurred to me: the World Trade Center? I was exhausted, but realized something was horribly, horribly wrong. I overheard something half-asleep about planes crashing and dragged my carcass out of bed. In the next room, a fuzzy picture of an ABC News special report and a smoldering set of New York skyscrapers graced the screen. Then one tower fell. It was absolutely surreal television.

Our classes were cancelled and a special chapel was held. Jim Allen, whose voice often tested the limits of our patience and constitution in class seemed strangely reassuring that day as it boomed out in prayer. Chapel, which was usually full but not packed, was spilled out into the halls surrounding. Afterward, I stepped outside. No planes or helicopters in the sky. The sun shone brightly, a beautiful day by any other standard. I went back to my dorm and tried calling my dad at work. The cell circuits were jammed and stopped allowing calls. I tried again, same response. I was alone in my room, unable to cope with the fact that a terrorist attack took place on American soil. I panicked, melted down, tired, unable to really grasp everything that was happening.

Sometime in the duration, the second tower fell. And the Pentagon was hit. And another plane was grounded in a Pennsylvania field, reportedly redirected and heading for the White House.

I was finally able to get through to my dad. “Tell me I’m still dreaming.”

“I’m afraid not.”

I broke down.

“What’s happening?”

“Only the Lord knows.”

Not exactly reassuring, but true. It was vintage Dad.

I finally got it together and hung up with my dad. I got dressed and went over to a friend’s apartment, where we sat and watched the events unfold on NBC. Smoke covered Manhattan. President Bush made a hasty announcement from what was likely an underground bunker somewhere.

Downtown Minneapolis can be a very busy place. It was dead that day, as the government shut down the entire downtown business district as a potential high-risk target.

And, of course, nothing has been the same since. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, which has made flying in America an absolute pain in the butt to this day. We entered two theaters of war. The stock market plunged. I started a job at Best Buy, where they had to pull back the new Dream Theater record due to the album cover depicting the New York skyline surrounded by fire. The night Bush addressed Congress, the entire store stopped to pay attention.

And people actually gave a crap about one another for a while. American flags went up everywhere, leading to the cliche flag bumper sticker and yellow ribbon magnet stickers on cars. We rallied around the fact that we were attacked, and ready to take care of whoever the enemy was.

Here we are, though, eight years after the fact. The country has never been more divided, as ideologies have torn the country asunder; the logical extrapolation of relativist/pluralist nonsense. For a while some people tried to argue that the events of 9/11 were an inside job. Thankfully, that nonsense was debunked. We are still in the throes of war and whether or not we may agree with what is happening, the reality of the matter is that we have soldiers there who are giving and risking far more than most of us at home ever will. Radical Islam still permeates a good part of the world, and is beginning to choke out European heritage and the birthplace of Western civilization.

In a way, things make even less sense now than they did on that day, and I’m fully awake. We could have crumbled on 9/12, but we didn’t. We decided that government and policy was more important than each other. There is serious talk about the state of the union and the future of a United States of America.

We are doing to ourselves what no one could do to us, and no one really cares because we refuse to find common ground. We, to borrow from Tolkien, have abandoned reason for delusions of grandeur, read: madness. Stubbornness can be an admirable trait, but when we steadfastly refuse to pursue truth and avoid falsehood, particularly in favor of clinging to ideologies that routinely fail when given a democratic majority, and further refuse to train our children to think critically and develop their rational functions, stubbornness is to choke ourselves to death.

No, at the rate we’re going, it won’t take planes or dirty bombs to cause this amazing American experiment to fail. We’re doing to ourselves right now.

When I was entering high school, I was invited to come with a select number of fellow youth group members to go to Pensacola, Florida to experience the Brownsville revival. At that point, it was into its second year, had gained national attention by church folk and non- alike, and some, including one globally-prominent minister claimed that it was the beginning of the final outpouring before the rapture.

Indeed, the revival drew a global audience. These were the years before the critical mass of satellite television and the interwebs, so the hubbub was largely church to church, and the response for that time was impressive. Considering the historical revivals, the Great Awakenings, Cane Ridge, Wales, Azusa Street, it’s a marvelous thing that with such limited communication they drew such attention. Of course, these events are sensational, not unlike riots or protests, and sensational events garner the attention of the public and media.

I would deny neither the sincerity of the seekers, nor the fact that they have encountered something spiritual. In the same breath, though, sincerity does not make something legitimate, nor does the spiritual encounter justify the end or means. Revival is not only overrated, but dangerous.

The information age has done a service in view of revival: We can explore from afar what is happening, and investigate to see exactly what is going on. The Lakeland revival generated buzz not too long ago, but then we saw exactly who Todd Bentley was and could then disregard it. Benny Hinn’s popularity took a nosedive after the folks at the Trinity Foundation exposed the varied shenanigans in and around the company. The veneer of revival isn’t necessarily that perfect, either: while I was at Brownsville, they were knocking down houses next door during the evening services. The already burgeoning church campus there had undercut their neighbors to make room for more sanctuary. I found this odd. Shortly after I returned from Florida that summer, I had found out that Brownsville had refused a request to be audited, and that members of the pastoral staff were building beachside villas.

All that, and Pensacola remained a really crusty, dirty place. The revival, aside from the chatter of Evangelicals, didn’t really seem to do much to the plethora of strip clubs down the street. And Pensacola remains a popular destination for the “Cops” crew.

All that said, it would be a strawman to kick revivals in the balls because there was some shady activity behind the scenes (or, sometimes, in the scenes themselves.) My beef with those who tend to lead revivals is separate from my problems with revival itself.

First, revival implies that the subject is dead or anemic. Neither, in any instance, is the case. When Evangelicals refer to “dead churches” it would be improper to say that a church has ceased to be animate. And, in the cases where such a pejorative term is used, it is highly inappropriate. No one holds the corner on theological truth. A more apropos term would be a sedentary church, a church inactive in the community or the world, motivated only by self-interest. Ironically, we have many churches that are sedentary, including charismatic churches that would prefer to be defined by their revivals!

Excitement is a poor trade-off for spiritual health. Consider revival to be a new year’s resolution: many say that they will lose weight. They will buy health club memberships, equipment, clothes, workout videos, and few will find that they keep on keepin’ on past January 15. Even fewer make it to February. The entire health club industry is predicated on the notion that people will sign up for contracts and never keep their end of the commitment other than monthly dues. The corollary for churches is disturbingly close to parallel.

Second to consider is the law of diminishing returns: for one to return to an established level of fervor or excitement, it takes a little more to get there. If God wanted his people to live in a revival state, wouldn’t the path be more consistent (not to be confused with easier) than it has historically been? Furthermore, what if Christians were in a constant revival mode? Would there not then be a claim for a higher yet level of excitement and zeal? Would revival then be the new status quo against which sympathetic believers would rebel?

Consider also the self-congratulating nature of revival: if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery–and this was especially true with Pensacola, where they actually encouraged people to mimic what was happening in the Florida panhandle back home–then what we have is not a people re-centered on being Christ’s ambassadors to the world, but a people who want to live in the thrill of what they experienced somewhere else, irrespective of whatever it is the Spirit may be speaking to a particular community of faith regarding the community surrounding them. This is the most troubling aspect to me, this revivolatry. The symptoms of revival have been observed in other cultures in other religious practices unfamiliar with charismatic Christianity. This does not delegitimize the charismata, but rather offers credence for it, though with a caveat: the manifestations are not spiritual, but human responses to the spiritual other. Revival’s tendency toward self-indulgence is self-indicting.

Finally, fire requires fuel. What was amazing about Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus was that the bush was on fire, yet completely intact. Nearly everyone who went to Brownsville burned out, most of them are no longer believers. Excitement fades. Honeymoons end. The soreness of exercise turns people away from exercise. Revivals create people who desire burnout, in order that they may try to get the feeling back. When we seek revival, we seek the absolute wrong thing. When we seek God for revival, I imagine God is mildly offended by such backhanded prayers.

The problem with revivals is that they provide no real commitment. It is lust rather than love, catering to our senses rather than our inner being; not even an affair, but a one night stand or a booty call.

The other problem with revival is that it stands in direct contradistinction to the covenental command of God: to walk humbly, to love justice and to be obedient to God’s leading. (Deuteronomy 10, rephrased in Micah 6, renewed tacitly in the teaching of Jesus to love God and others.) God calls us not to be undignified like David, a reference many revival-seekers improperly hide behind to justify their actions, but to welcome the sojourner and hold others in higher regard than ourselves, which would presumably preclude flopping around on the floor, making animal sounds under the power of “the spirit”, or holding meetings that regular people generally hold with distaste and disregard.

Consistency may be blase to our senses, but it is what God demands of his people. There may not be anything less congruent with his demands than what charismatics consider the high watermark of spiritual experience.

In our sincere desire to worship, could it be that we make for ourselves an abomination?

A battle has raged for years between Evangelical Christians and those who claim skepticism/agnosticism/atheism on the grounds of critical thinking. The accusations are of garden variety: Christians allegedly aren’t able to think for themselves or keep an open mind. The charges are usually levelled by those who used to be believers, charges lobbed with all the zeal of a fresh convert.

One website I have become familiar with is manned by a former Christian trying to figure out “what it means to be an unbeliever and a skeptic.” I don’t mind that people choose to abandon their faith, that is, it does not offend me. Perhaps it should, but that’s not the point. That said, it does profoundly bother me when they proclaim their new gospel with little intellectual integrity or currency. To be clever or witty is not to be mistaken with being thoughtful or reasonable. It makes for good punditry, but awful, imbalanced rhetoric. (I’m looking at you, Mencken.) In other words, politicians ought not be mistaken for intellectuals; whether one wants to admit it or not, the battle for a dominant particular cultural theistic paradigm is more political posturing than anything else.

Plainly, there is no such thing as open-mindedness. To be open-minded does not say as much about a person as it does contrast from someone else. If someone claims to be open-minded, she says nothing about herself as much as she does those who she assumes are supposedly closed-minded. Ironically, the claim of open-mindedness actually is closed-minded, but under the pretense of relativism, she can claim nothing about herself as much as she can fling an under-the-radar ad hominem at someone else. It’s no different than a politician claiming to be ‘progressive’. What is that, anyway? What constitutes your progress? Without an assumption of something that is either status quo or regressive, the progressive has no leg on which to stand.

The issue here is assumption, particularly epistemic assumption. No one lacks epistemic assumptions, every person has a set of parameters by which he or she understands the world. So, the recently-converted unbeliever claims on the grounds of thinking for himself, presuming that believers do not think for themselves. Or that they have developed critical thinking capacities that preclude religious belief, presuming that religious believers are intellectual neanderthals.

In the interest of full disclosure, it comes as no surprise to many of you that I hold a particular disdain for the subcultural foolishness and accidental hubris of pop Christianity, I lament the general lack of theological development in our churches from clergy and laity alike, stupidity drives me batty and I generally have a low view of humanity. If that were all there was to it, I’d be a pretty miserable person. That said, I am moved by nobility and goodness, extraordinary acts of valor and beauty, celebrate in communities that have found a way to eschew mediocrity spiritual and social and am unafraid to act in sacrificial compassion for those around me. I refuse to be defined by the things that would keep me merely a cynic and nothing more.

It seems that our defiant agnostic friends would, in a great and terrible kicking against the goads, rather that they were simply not those people. Critical thinking, then, is a cop out, if for no other reason than the truth: critical thinking itself cannot and does not automatically render religious faith to be false. Critical thinking is not designed to deny the existence of things, but to affirm, leaving the a-theist, a-gnostic, un-believer in a most undesirable position: if the point of the aforementioned is to carve out a position that refutes supernatural or religious activity, why all the bluster? As has been said elsewhere, if there is nothing, from a purely materialist perspective, why (again, causally, not metaphysically) is there anything at all?

In sum, perhaps the time has come to doubt doubt, a point Michael Polanyi makes in his tacit epistemology. This falsification-run-amok has caused much harm to the intellectual cause. It’s easy to negate, it’s more difficult to affirm. Negation comes in the critique of something already presented, while the task of epistemic affirmation requires the enterprising and courageous mind to construct a case for something. The epistemic affirmation process requires, at its core a + b = c. The negation is a parasite to the affirming host. Rather than building a case for a-theism, the process ought to be a case for something else, for example, nihilism.

The absurdity of arguing against something that, in the mind of the skeptic, doesn’t exist reaches epic proportions. In a post next week on sailerb, I shall demonstrate why the Pfeffergorgles should have nothing to do with northwestern Iowa.

This is not to say that there is no place for critical thinking: clearly, there have been varying levels of crappy arguments for different things, from Xeno’s paradox to the earth-centered universe to the existence of God. The philosophical task involves the critique of substandard arguments, and standard arguments ought to withstand criticism. There is a level of quality control involved here, let there be no doubt. In fact, this work is an exercise in critique. I digress.

If critical thinking isn’t enough, there’s always science. Indeed, our friend also claims that reading science books (“with an open mind”, he proudly proclaims) helped to “[remove] layer after layer of propaganda”. Now, what exactly about science delivered him to salvation? Old-earth and (presumably Darwinian) evolution. This is a circumstantial ad hominem: the inference here is that young-earth creationism and intelligent design are non-negotiable aspects of Christian faith. This is patently false, moreover, they have nothing to do with Christian soteriology. Like much of what one will see coming from people like our unbeliever, it is a red herring.

I would agree that there is far too much happy, thoughtless chugging of the kool-aid in Evangelical church circles; our response to Darwin has been tepid at best. That said, there are two major points that have been deliberately left out of the general conversation. First, the line of thinking that faith and science are at odds with one another is a philosophical fiction, and actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Religion is often the strawman by which those who hold to naturalism (atheism repackaged) create their aire of dominance. Second, the acceptance of evolution does not, by any means, delegitimize Christianity. The head gasket of a car engine does not blow because someone purchases a car.  When it is also considered that a hyper-literal interpretation of Genesis is fundamentally improper, then the idea that evolution ruins faith is almost laughable. I am willing to concede, again, the fact that our churches have by and large abandoned the scientific conversation, but in the same way, science has generally abandoned faith. It’s a two-way street, paved not by science, but by philosophy.

Science is an extension of empiricism. For centuries, it was natural philosophy, a way of understanding the world around us. Today, it lurches toward scientism, the idea that science is the only way to properly interpret reality. There is one glaring problem, though: science, the process of understanding the empirical world, is reliant on epistemic assumptions, if for no other reason than everything can be reduced to one fundamentally unjustifiable premise. Science not only has its limits, it is, by definition, limited. Science cannot affirm or deny the existence of anything beyond the observable world, which makes Dawkins’ task, amongst others, utterly vain.

What can science do? It can provide powerful explanatory ability, help us understand and harness the capabilities of the world and its resources, provide us a means by which we can use technology as a tool to help (or sometimes, harm) humanity. It is reliant upon the observer or participant. It is not designed to provide us with a why, particularly, a why that is there is no why. And, in the process of understanding the world, it, like critical thinking, is designed to affirm truth and refute error. It also has been the means by which scientists for centuries until late have found a place of worship.

Science is always philosophical, but philosophy is seldom, if ever, scientific. That which is more limited has less explanatory power.

Even in these two instances, it is clear that the idea of science and critical thought somehow negates Christian faith is little more than a red herring, a diversion from the affirming task naturalism consistently fails to undertake. Through circumstantial ad hominem and a lot of clever sound and fury, there is little beyond the presentation that would constitute serious reflection on a very serious matter of personal worldview.

I grant that some of these matters cause serious questions for the theist, and we ought to consider them: if evolution has taken place, what do we do with Christian salvation? Is evolution a legitimate way to understand the creation of the world? If so, why is it that so many other fields of science have moved past the 19th century, while the origins of the universe have apparently been settled for nearly 200 years? Or could it be that Darwin’s work was a product of the times, a work fueled with the spirit of the Enlightenment? Could it be that Darwin, who clearly was inspired by/borrowed from Hegel, Lyell and LaPlace, simply applied a philosophical paradigm to the observable world? Even Newton got trumped. Why not Darwin?

This is what we have by the very pen (or, in this instance, fingers) of our friend: “I was an evangelical Christian for over a decade, completely convinced that God was real and Jesus was alive today. I attended Bible college to train to be a pastor. I worked at a Christian church for many years. I have ‘led people to Christ.’ I have left tracts in bathrooms. I have knocked on hundreds of doors asking people to repent and believe in Jesus. . . . I no longer believe in a personal God or that Jesus was born of a virgin, worked miracles, and rose from the dead. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, angels or demons, holy books or prophecy. I don’t believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago, or that God intelligently designed every species.”

What does he believe? As a self-professed “unbeliever” and “skeptic”, he believes that Christian faith is false, and that there is no way to know anything with certainty.

Problem one: faith cannot be false, a faith claim is a belief claim. Truth and falsehood are terms reserved for facts, not beliefs. Problem two: he is certain that nothing can be certain. However, he is certain that critical thinking works and that Darwinian evolution is factual. He is also certain with regard to probability. (Never mind that Pascal was certain about probability, and yet held firmly to his Christian beliefs.) A skeptic, by definition, doubts the possibility of real knowledge. Why science? Why logic? In spinning himself out of one alleged delusion, he has strangled himself with another.

So, what we have is a person who simply no longer wants to be a Christian, and believes he is warranted in doing so. And that would be fine: he is welcome to find his own way. I have no relationship to him and have no way to provide insight or investment into his life. That said, his reasoning for abandoning faith is little more than one watery excuse after another. He is not interested in declaring what actually happened to change his mind, or in building a case for a better worldview. He is only interested in differentiating himself from his subjective cultural experiences in a setting that affirmed young-earth, literal six-day creation and demanded that he and his friends go door-to-door with tracts and win the lost for Jesus. And in his attempts to say “I’m not one of them anymore,” all he has are generalities: Christians don’t think for themselves, believe in science or probability, ask tough questions, can’t imagine the Bible as anything but literally written by God, and are closed-minded anti-intellectual bigots who believe that God literally created the universe in six days about six to ten-thousand years ago. He may as well be campaigning against bleeding heart liberals or tax cuts for the rich.

In all honesty, I pity him; that his experience in Christian faith was so intellectually vapid that he felt the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I have no pity for his reasons, as they are insulting to anyone who is interested in thoughtful discourse. He is entitled to his reasons for walking away, but he ought not presume to insult the intelligence of his audience, many of whom simply accept his conclusions as true. Preach it, brother!

In reality, his new-found faith is no more reasonable than the faith he left. His new faith is, also, quite unreasonable. He just doesn’t realize it yet.

http:// unreasonablefaith [dot] com [slash] about

[This is  major essay submitted for one of my classes last quarter. It earned an A, which gave me great satisfaction. Enjoy. --b.]

***

The traditional model of Christian missions is to go to another culture or people group, set up a church facility and invite people in. This is what has become known as a classic “missions station”, and it has been criticized by experts in comparative religion as well as put into disuse by missionaries themselves for its Westernizing and syncretizing effect in the cultures missionaries have attempted to reach with the Gospel.¹

While not referred to as a missions station, Christian attempts at social justice right here in America in no small part resemble the missions stations of a bygone era in overseas missions. Though well-intentioned endeavors, what has happened is that, like the advent of hybrid Christian-native religious practices in the Caribbean and Latin America as a result of the slave trade, the model has been turned on its head. As homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, food pantries and urban outreach efforts, all of which are noble Christian responses to serious domestic concerns, have become a part of the American cultural landscape, rather than addressing and resolving said concerns, they have become dependent upon them.

Hypothetically, if the problem of drugs in a metropolitan community was solved, a drug rehab facility would have to be closed, thus putting people out of work and money invested, usually by churches and upper-middle class benefactors, in facilities wasted. Or a converted hospital intended to be a one-stop refuge for all sorts of social ills: a homeless shelter, drug treatment facility, workplace training, urban ministry; what is to be of such a complex (and there are several of these around the country) if these problems were solved?

These attempts at social justice, though undertaken with good will and intent, are no different in spirit and scope than the obsolete mission stations of missions efforts past, and I intend to argue that they, rather than address the myriad problems of urban and suburban America, exacerbate them. Further, and more subtly, I intend to argue that our churches have themselves become missions stations, exacerbating a culture in decline from its Judeo-Christian ethical moorings. In brief, as we institutionalize, we minimize.

***

“Chinese is not a language, it is a speech impediment!”

– an unnamed missionary wife from the 1981 biopic Hudson Taylor

***

Missions stations were the primary mode of global evangelism from the medieval period up to the 19^th century. Missionaries would reach their intended destination and build a church, greet the natives and work to compel them to faith in Western Christianity.² It should also be noted that missions efforts were inexorably tied to the expansion of colonial power, with European powers viewing those heathens who were open to the faith as easily subjected to their encroaching respective political, military and cultural empires (Africa). Those who were not so welcoming would simply be trampled and conquered (Latin America) or abandoned (Japan).

If the point of the missions station model of evangelization is to bring the masses to a place in order that they get exposed to the message, it also doubles as a cultural foothold. The missions station is symbolic of the missionary bringing his or her culture to an unfamiliar people, the church is symbolic of a specific value set, for the missionary from that period, the church is a slice of home, with the hope, shared by missionary and country, that it is a seed for growth to come.

It is precisely for this reason that the mission station model was refuted an abandoned: not only were some parts of the world syncretized by the fusion of Christian faith and traditional religious practices,³ but the notion of cultural supremacy created resentment. Feudal Japan was very hostile to the missionary efforts of Catholics after Xavier, as depicted in the powerful historical fiction of Shusaku Endo’s Silence. The crusades left an entire culture hostile to Jews and Christians. Is it then any surprise that the post-Christian West is fundamentally hostile—or worse yet, ambivalent—toward Christians, their message and lifestyle?

The West may have seen the rise of capitalism, monarchies, empires and democracies, as well as Christian faith, but the two are not intertwined: that divorce was made very clear in the Enlightenment. Rulers from Constantine to Hitler tried to corral the power of the church toward their own motives with varying degrees of success. This is especially true in America, where the religious vote has been courted by nominees from local leaders to the presidency. The underlying message of our history is clear: our churches are and have always been American mission stations. As Charles Chaney has frankly said it: “The missionary task is one task.”⁴ The failure to recognize our churches as missions stations does not mean they are not. And if our churches are found to be missions stations, our ministry efforts are guilty by association as well.

***

“We have seen it out here in the West, where beside our rivers and lakes our towns expand; the first petal it puts forth is the Church—the second is the theatre.”

– an unnamed Unitarian minister, as quoted in Life: the Movie by Neal Gabler

***

It is generally common knowledge that for years the church and her adherents led the way in regard to caring for the sick, elderly and poor in America. The social gospel of the late 19^th century emphasized Christian charity, some would argue at the cost of soteriological efficacy.⁵ All across the country, Catholic, Methodist and Baptist hospitals dot the cityscapes, from major metropolitan areas to farming towns on the byways. Nursing homes, homeless shelters, entire quasi-franchised drug rehabilitation centers all were fueled by Christian compassion for the less-fortunate and desperate. These facilities and programs were designed to alleviate suffering, an attempt to cure social ills and better the general welfare of the communities in our nation. And yet here we are, well into the 21^st century, and these problems still persist and are as prevalent as they ever were, possibly worse.

Of course, the sick and poor will always be with us; about this Jesus was certainly correct. That said, if the problems we have set out to address have not been solved or even appear to be improving after an entire century (and counting, both before and after) of Christian charity and attempts at social justice, we must stop looking at how bad the situations have gotten and begin to analyze our methods, ethical standards and theological basis. Given the fact that the presence of churches has not stemmed the tide of cultural postmodernism and the rise of post-Christian America, is it then any wonder why our attempts to make our cities and towns better places have also not solved issues of drug abuse or homelessness?

At this point, I slightly digress to address a potential criticism of my thesis, that these “American missions stations” have actually expounded problems than adequately addressed them. It is true that hospitals and clinics do not make sickness worse (though a day spent in a urgent care waiting room might convince one otherwise), that would be the correlation-causation fallacy. And that would be a valid form of refutation, but for hospitals and clinics, and even then a point for the thesis can be made. There are those who, for whatever reason, will habitually show up in emergency rooms and urgent care centers trying to work the system. And therein lies the problem: it’s a system.

***

“There’s a great soup kitchen in downtown Scranton. Delicious pea soup on Thursdays.”

– Creed Bratton, NBC sitcom The Office

***

The Christian response to real people’s suffering in our midst is to create systems. Systems do not care for people, they fulfill perceived needs and perceived requests are inherently prejudicial statements. Homeless shelters do not solve problems of homelessness because they only treat the immediate symptom and operate with an implicit premise that there is enough of a long-term need that a church or non-profit is justified in making such an investment. Even a Christian homeless shelter will not solve homelessness, if for no more obvious reason than Christian salvation does not come with a home, a soup kitchen does not keep a person full, but rather gives the down and out another option for shelter or food tomorrow. Similarly, inner city ministries are reliant on the premise that inner cities are dangerous, violent places and they also happen to be sinful. Christian drug rehabilitation programs rely on a similar premise as the homeless shelter: if the problem weren’t long-term, there wouldn’t be such a push for investing in facilities, materials and manpower.

Again, we see that these are problem-based solutions; cynically, they are solutions looking for problems. Could it possibly be, then, that our churches operate in a similar way: that they exist to address the perceived sinfulness of the saved and secular? If one historically has come from the other, is there a way to say no with a straight face and sober mind? The reality of the matter is that our ministry efforts are a direct reflection of how we view ourselves, a window into the soul of a faith community. Frankly, if what we are doing is out of some misguided sense of civic duty, then we have already failed to act in Christ-likeness and we have failed ethically. We cannot extend a hand of compassion while our collective head is turned and the other collective hand is pinching shut the collective nose.

As the Great Society government initiatives of the 1960s have proved, soulless disregard for the personal nature of social problems has left in its wake nothing but cultural devastation and dependency. Housing projects destroyed the once-proud fabric of African-American communities, welfare payments took away the incentive for disadvantaged people to find work, the poor got poorer while also losing their (owned) homes for (rented/subsidized) ‘housing’. Governments are not supposed to be in the business of compassion, the terms ‘government’, ‘business’ and ‘compassion’ are prima facie mutually exclusive in the supposedly constitutionally democratic West. And, while the term ‘church’ should invoke the imago Christus, perhaps in actuality, it should be included amongst the aforementioned as well if the Church operates in such a cold, problem-based manner in response to the needs of those the Church has mandated themselves to reach.

Thus another problem arises in relation to these missions stations, an existential Catch-22: do these outreaches exist to address particular needs with the intent of ending them, or do they exist to address a need that will never go away? While a third way also exists (what if there is no endgame in mind?), it ultimately would fall into the second category, the lack of endgame thinking would seem to indicate that there is no end to the various social ills, or else they would strategize in a way that would show they are interested in ending problems instead of unintentionally embracing them.

These organizations, and the people who staff and support them, are not acting out of malice: many of these people are Christians who take their faith seriously. They are simply unaware of the unintended consequences of our outreach efforts, but are all for changing things for the better. If the missions station model has been largely abandoned overseas, why do we still rely on it here in the States, which are admittedly post-Christian? And why has there been so little second thinking on the matter?⁶

In our zeal to serve God and the world with compassion and a message of repentance, in a way that sometimes seems to reflect Machiavelli’s prince more than Christ’s great commission, we have othered the downtrodden. My reasoning is based in a criticism of overseas missions: many times I recall it was commonplace for missionaries to come to churches wearing the garb of the culture they were working with and have slide shows of desperate mothers and children in examples of extreme poverty, only to eventually get to a picture of the missionary, usually in American business casual or a classic minister’s suit, preaching at some kind of crusade or church with a financial appeal at the end. Though they have definitive Christian foundations established and have their own native missions efforts, America still is eager to send missionaries to South America and Africa. During the Cold War, it was thrilling to hear about Bible smuggling operations past the Iron Curtain, underground church meetings and escaping the police. A similar excitement exists today with missions efforts into the so-called 10/40 window.

I’m afraid that we supported these missionaries because they offered a kind of sex appeal: these are exotic people with exotic traditions, if for no other reason than they are merely different than the Scandanavian American nuclear family sitting in a church in the upper Midwest, transfixed by the stories of how badly these people need the gospel we’re going to take to them. And the reasons for reaching these people are not entirely pure, when 1) we have already othered them; and 2) Evangelical mission is heavily guided primarily by eschatology rather than compassion: “…And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”⁷ What, then, is the reason for domestic social justice ministry? Genuine compassion, a desire to see things change or perhaps is it white guilt? Perhaps it is, to varying degrees, all of them.

Though the culture has dramatically shifted away from Judeo-Christian moorings, our strategies have not; in so doing, there has been a dual syncretism taking place: these ministries accept the fact that they will not make things better and simply keep operating for the sake of operating, and those who are recipients of these outreaches always have options that keep them in a cycle of dependency. Neither option is very palatable, but very much rooted to the reality of the situation.

The aforementioned one-stop urban missions stations that began to spring up in the 1990s came from a megachurch model that saw its height of popularity in the late 80s and early 90s. Such an idea is reminiscent of Oral Roberts’ failed City of Faith complex, itself an unorthodox syncretism of faith healing and medical practice that ended in embarrassing fashion in 1989. A one-stop urban missions station developed in a former hospital in Los Angeles was the brainchild of an charismatic megachurch in Phoenix, which linked the missions effort to the church they were planting in the same area. The model was so blatantly similar that the pastor’s son became the pastor and director of the LA enterprise. A similar effort was started in New York by the same people who launched LA, and the idea began to grow.

Sensing the excitement, a denominational branch in Wisconsin was hoping for a similar effort in Milwaukee. A Milwaukee-area health care provider finally donated an old hospital complex in 2000, and ambitious churches and denominational leaders rallied behind what some bragged would be Milwaukee’s own version of the LA operation. Nine years later, the dilapidated complex sits largely vacant, some of it parceled off to developers, a fraction of it actually used for ministry and efforts to keep it alive have nearly caused a financial implosion for the denominational chapter. More tellingly, the neighborhood where this complex is has not been rejuvenated in the least by their presence; Milwaukee’s most dangerous years, including being in the running for being the “murder capital” of the US, were during the nine years between the opening of the complex and today. They may not have contributed to making things worse, but clearly, things are not getting better in the central city. With or without them, Milwaukee, a once-proud city with a great sense of tradition, continues to rot with few silver linings around the myriad dark clouds.

The same denomination is the parent of a major Christian drug rehabilitation program, which proudly cites an 86% long-term success rate.⁸ The program is a fusion of drug rehab, Christian discipleship and personal renovation, with facilities and programs all around the world. Its advent was the subject of a compelling, best-selling book in the early 1960s and is a major recipient of donations and denominational manpower. After over 50 years of existence, a major US initiative to crack down on the drug trade and thousands upon thousands of dollars in donations, rehabilitation ministry to drug addicts is as needed as ever. It is true that they were the benefactors of failed domestic policy, they have also failed to resolve one of the most troubling domestic problems America faces.

***

“For the poor you will always have with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.”

– Mark 14.7 [ESV]

***

In the zeal of wanting to improve our communities, Christians have devoted countless hours and an enormous amount of money and manpower in the attempt to cure some of the social ills that have plagued our culture for seemingly as long as America has been a country. Some efforts predate the nation, others came from the grassroots of the American churches and revivals. While we ought to admire the efforts of those who have tried to make the world a better place, in the same manner, we ought to face the sobering reality that we not only have not solved these problems, but have accidentally perpetuated them by creating institutions and programs that only address these issues as extensions of sin.

In conclusion, and to be fair, these efforts are not the only ones worthy of criticism: first, no one person or organization has adequately tackled issues of homelessness or drug addiction. One must, when considering the gravity of the matter, consider whether or not Jesus was right when he suggested that these problems may never go away. How seriously do we take his advice? It seems to be that the best remedy for overcoming such problems lies within the will of those who are homeless or addicted. Shelters can be exploited and rehab can quickly turn into relapse, but the determined person, surrounded by a supportive community can overcome.

Second, these Christian social justice enterprises are a direct mirror image of the Church’s utter inability to grant others the grace of humanity needed to be made whole. As the missions stations of old failed to adequately bring the message of Christ to cultures, the American missions stations which dot the landscape from one coast to the other—that is, our churches—have a myopic, sin-oriented perspective that permeates everything we do, giving off a sense of persona non grata to anyone who is different than us. Like the religious leaders of antiquity, Evangelicals have a difficult time seeing people for their inherent value but for their sin status. A properly Christian ethic addresses those who are poor or afflicted with compassion, while flatly refusing to other those who may not be ‘one of us’. The fusion of proselytizing with charitable work has left these well-intentioned organizations insufficient in regard to both: if our churches cannot adequately convey the gospel to the surrounding culture, what gives us any hope that our social justice efforts will adequately address the serious needs of our suffering neighbors?

In short, perhaps we, the Christians, are the ones who need to be rehabilitated.

My friend and former pastor found these words of mine good enough to repost after I commented on his post on existential anxiety, aka, my wheelhouse. So I figured I ought to put them out here, too, for all five or six of you to read.

It’s almost as if you were begging me to comment! You had me at exist, friend.

OK, I’m done now.

The end draws near for us here in Central Wisconsin, and while we are excited to be moving and facing new challenges and opportunities down in the middle-west, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to see everyone we would like to see, or do some of the things we’d like to do.

Stevens Point has been home for me for 22 years. I grew up here, graduated high school and college here. Built a non-profit here. Loved here, hated here, met incredible people, enjoyed great success and failure, felt like a prince and an outcast. Joy and suffering. And, for all the experiences I’ve had, people I’ve met and trouble I in all likelihood should have gotten in to, here I am with less than five days left and feeling like there is much I have yet to do.

When I stop to think about it, though, I notice two things: the pond has gotten too small, and I have grown too big, in the most non-narcissistic way possible.

Thanks to a story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I have become absolutely hooked on deadmalls.com and labelscar.org. In fact, when wife and I were recently visiting Kansas City prior to our impending move on a scouting trip, I took her through Blue Ridge Crossing. Only a few years ago, I had experienced KC as an adult for the first time and remember the shell of Blue Ridge Mall. It looked crusty even then, a recent addition to the plethora of industrial-commercial wasteland (which, ironically, makes Kansas City endearing and even appealing) only to be re-imagined as a big box retail outlet, home to a Wal-Mart and Lowe’s, amongst other outparcel properties. The extra-crusty cineplex is still sitting there, a creepy capitalist mausoleum, fenced in.

These kinds of places bother me, creep me out, fascinate me. Knowing that thousands of people spent millions of dollars there, and it sits on the south of I-70, a relic of a bygone day. I read about Bannister Mall, and the video footage of an urban explorer sifting through what was left after fire department exercises was downright heartbreaking.

I was a wreck when the Minnesota North Stars left Minnesota for a land that had no naturally-occuring ice. Though we had moved to Central Wisconsin from the south TC suburbs six years prior, we were there in Minneapolis the day after their fate was sealed. It was like an entire metropolitan area had its heart ripped out. My brother, along with Mom, did campus visits, and Dad and I drove around town. We listened to WCCO, callers crying and upset that a team that was the ideal image of American hockey would be wrested from the unquestioned hotbed of American hockey.

Later, when it was clear that the North Stars’ arena, the Met Center, would not be solvent without a permanent tenant, they gave the go ahead to blow it up. My family was again in the area when they blew it up, and we went to the Mall of America the day after. There I was, staring at the imploded wreckage of a hockey arena, a place that was indelibly etched into my earliest memories. My brother’s caustic sense of humor manifested itself weeks later when he sent me a postcard from college, a four-frame series of the demolition. On the back, “Just thinking of you. [R.]” I stared at it the entire next day in junior high.

And for the record; yes, Norm Green still sucks.

So I get the general idea the folks at labelscar are trying to convey: these malls aren’t just the hubs of capitalism, but connecting places for entire communities. When they die, they take childhood, often mistaken with youthful innocence, with it. I’ve seen some of the places that made the dubious lists of both places: I saw Apache Plaza in St. Anthony, lived near Knollwood in St. Louis Park, thought Festival Bay in Orlando looked too new to be so empty. I walked through the empty corridors of Port Plaza and Park Plaza as a bored young person during church conferences. Most recently, I saw movies at the Tallahassee Mall, which was alive and kicking when I lived down yonder for an academic year.

And then, there’s my own hometown, with its own dead mall: the CenterPoint MarketPlace. Like Port and Park Plazas, it was developed as a proactive reaction to sprawl. Unsubstantiated rumor persists that an idea much like Appleton’s Fox River Mall was proposed for Stevens Point, but the downtown businesses caused an uproar, and the city responded by slapping a mall downtown, damaging the integrity of the central city infrastructure and, most notably, gutting the backs of the old storefronts, not the least of which was the Main Street Opera House, a landmark on the national record, and converted into a classic American storefront cinema. “The Fox” sits there, dormant. It was dilapidated for years of neglect and disrepair, thanks in part to short-sighted city planners and a jilted property owner. In recent years, the city tried to mend fences and was able to procure funds to restore the old theater marquee, and though much idle chatter has come and gone about bringing it back to life, it sits there. Perhaps someday.

In any case, the mall was a hit at first: boasting a Sears hardware and appliances specialty store, a JCPenney and a ShopKo held down the anchors, and the inner spaces were well-occupied. It worked for a while, (unlike The Avenue in downtown Appleton, which was DOA and is shockingly left off the registers at both labelscar and deadmalls) the mall and downtown businesses made for a team that worked in the 80s. I remember doing “Crazy Days” in the summer, a giant downtown sidewalk sale that was actually worth the while. And, of course, I remember Kay-Bee Toy and Hobby. Though overpriced, it was a little slice of childhood bliss.

I also remember when it closed. And I always will remember that as being the beginning of the end of the CenterPoint Mall.

Later, when I worked downtown at a sub shop, I took count of the vacant spaces during delivery runs through the mall to ShopKo. (It was more convenient to walk than anything else, those of you who are from here or around here will understand.) 70+% vacancy, and that was five years ago. In an attempt to revitalize, planners added another anchor in the late 90s, Stage. Stage was a crappy store with a crap-pile selection and when word got out that they targeted mid-sized cities like Stevens Point because they could exploit the huddled, unwashed working class yokels, they may as well have taken hemlock. Stage shuttered its doors, and eventually (that is, over a year had passed before) a Dunham’s Sports took over the space. Even then, mom-and-pop joints have come and gone, the boutique extension that led out to Main Street turned out to be a colossal bust, the jewelry stores finally gave up, and there may not be realistically more than three inner tenants left.

The citizens, finally fed up with the utter failure of the mall, began to cry out for action. The Downtown Business Association, long since organized after the days of the threat of sprawl, in thug, mob-boss like action refused to let anything happen to the mall, for fear of other, more successful developments on the east side and in Plover to the south. (Also not helping the state of affairs was the truly forward-thinking and bold strategies of downtown Wausau, where the mall not only survives, but has actually reenergized downtown business while also embracing development to the south of them, but that’s another matter. A matter called basic economics, a matter apparently not taught in these ‘progressive’ parts. The current, overblown state of the economy has dealt a blow to our friends up north, but let’s face it: Stevens Point’s retail life was put on a respirator when practically every other part of the country was booming in the 80s and early 90s.)

So, when Wausau and Appleton were viable options, and Madison, Milwaukee and Minneapolis not that far off, why would anyone go to a little mall in the most difficult-to-navigate part of a small city in Central Wisconsin? I mourn the loss of those shopping centers where memories were made, but I feel none of that same affinity toward our own dead mall. Frankly, it was never important enough, or relevant long enough, to people in these parts to leave an indelible impression.

And, in the inevitable introspection that comes with seeing the death of other people’s collective childhood, I see that this area never really deserved what it had. K-B, jewelry stores and record shops are for people with disposable income. A person can buy a toy anywhere, or a ring. For an indiscriminate consumer, these things can be picked up at a ShopKo or a K-Mart. Why would we need a toy store? There are jewelers on Main St., why should I go in the mall? What the mall did was give the area a false sense of retail entitlement: malls thrive when anchor stores lure people in and the specialty stores inside keep them in. When K-B hit its first of many fiscal potholes, they shuttered the Stevens Point location in the first wave. Same with Sears, which reappeared in the same format years later on the south side. As other retail destinations grew in size, stature and appeal, ours did precisely the opposite. Good intentions disappear or are broken under the weight of harsh financial reality.

In Stevens Point, it was a mixture of both: clearly, the strategy was little better than suicidal over the long-term: the mall dried up and now the downtown runs the risk of becoming all bars, tattoo/piercing joints and seedy, as though there weren’t enough bars and seediness. What was for a short time a set of gemini stars is now nearly a black hole of retail (and cultural) blight.

I get the sentimentality that comes with seeing people and places undone, but this area is too culturally practical and hardy for that kind of emotional nonsense. They’d rather gut a historic building and make room for something shiny and new, only to complain about it later when it doesn’t work out as hoped and, mind-bogglingly have the audacity to refuse to do anything to attempt to undo the damage done.

And that’s why people drive to Appleton (or further) to shop. It’s also an auxiliary reason why people like wife and me choose to move elsewhere.

I had dinner downtown with one of my very closest friends last night. It’s a bit of a tradition for us when we haven’t connected for a while. As we left, we looked around and saw how many kids were out, hanging out with nothing to do. The Fox sat there, empty with a nice, shiny sign that wasn’t even lit as it should be. Empty (or closed) storefronts greeted the eyes, and yet everyone was there.

You see, on that end of downtown is the vast majority of parking for the bars on the opposite end. At first blush, you’d think downtown was the place to be, vibrant and alive and full of people; in reality, they’re there because there is nowhere else to go. Thankfully, the world still has places that connect people in ways that don’t have to explicitly involve ennui. Or beer goggles.

Through it all, thank you, Stevens Point. I hope you’ll grow up someday.

[exit stage southwest]

“Ah, I guess I’m gettin’ too old for my job. Too grouchy — can’t stand the aggravation. You know how it is.” — Sterling Hayden as Captain McCluskey, The Godfather

My nerves are about fried these days. I feel like I’m in entropy. Though I never intended for this site to be a place where I vent and treat it as some kind of exhibitionistic diary, I think I need it to be such tonight.

We just finished three weeks of transitioning out of our apartment, putting our stuff into storage and are now living with the parents until our time here finishes just after Memorial Day. Realistically, life may not be normal again until August.

I’m getting to be this crotchety this soon, I don’t know if I would want to know me come summer. The stress is cracking me. I jumped the gun and unloaded on some poor schmuck on Facebook the other night. I was right, but I was also very, very wrong. Looking back, I should have just left it alone, or at least given the benefit of the doubt. Little things, AKA the bane of my existence, pile up and get under my skin. The one descends to four, even breaking through to the unhealthy levels. A typically benign case of OCD has gotten noticeably more dominating, I find myself rationalizing ways to blow off some steam, leaving me generally lethargic. The time I get to myself I find teeming with ennui. When I’m busy, I’m too busy; when I’m not I’m bored. It’s not a good cycle to be in. And then there’s school. Lots of work ahead to plow through.

So I’m here at work during audit, with a moment to reflect. To breathe. Finally.

Things really aren’t that bad. Tax season kicked us in the nards, we were broke for almost two weeks recovering from what is our last massive self-employment tax payout. Now we’re stockpiling cash, readying for the big move. Wife’s job is set and waiting a final rubber stamp; I finally am getting a break and hammering out details. We’re working on acquiring a mortgage. I’m back in an exercise routine that kicks my butt in a good way. We have so much to look forward to.

And I’m self-destructing from stress.

So I’m going to take some time to regroup, get things together, get my life back in balance and see what happens from there. I’m cutting off Facebook and temporarily shrinking my world. Spending some time in the scriptures, getting back to reading The Imitation regularly. And writing out here in a way that doesn’t blow people apart.

The information age has shrunk our world to an uncomfortable size. All this access to information and data hasn’t necessarily improved humanity; sometimes I wonder if it makes it worse. (This past winter, I read Anthony O’Hear’s After Progress, which served as affirmation of such sentiment. Highly recommended.) Things are more convenient, but convenient doesn’t necessarily mean better. It makes mincemeat of the disposition of the learned and unlearned, the savvy and crude, the sacred and the profane. But if this is the great equalizer, I’m already skeptical of egalitarian worldview: I don’t need this. Perhaps we could all stand for less of it.

Of course, this is a lesson learned after the meltdown. What can I do but take stock, clean up and start over?

On Good Friday, I left a status update out there that said “rethinking Good Friday”, with a quote from Acts 15. As the [holy] week has crescendo-ed into the passion weekend, I’ve seen more and more status updates about everything from Passover to Good Friday, and now as we’ve officially crossed over into resurrection Sunday, the resurrection. I find the entirety of the passion to be entirely profound; the cross (and, more importantly, the empty tomb) are symbols and realities that literally changed everything we thought we understood about our metaphysical framework. And it it because of its raw power that I find myself wholly irritated by the status updates. And I’m willing to admit that I’m being a curmudgeon about it all, but hear me out.

First, Jesus did not die for you. That’ll rub some people the wrong way, but if we’re taking Paul (a second-hand, after-the-fact witness) as the authority on the matter, then we’re missing the point. Jesus dying for us is, plainly, miscontextualizing the matter. A crucified Jewish peasant passed off as a incendiary zealot means nothing for us. They were a dime a dozen in antiquity, and they all came and went as often as clouds and corrupt politicians. What is it that John (John who, if he did actually write the eponymous gospel, was there firsthand for it all) encourages us to do with his story at the conclusion of it? Paraphrased, but sticking to the truth of the text, it is an exhortation to believe and find life in his authority. A Jewish zealot has no authority, even one who performed miracles and amazed crowds regardless of their standing on the social spectrum. The guy was betrayed, framed as a revolutionary and criminal, and executed with cold and ruthless Roman efficiency. If you want to celebrate that, fine. Just understand that you do so, wittingly or otherwise, for the reasons the religious leaders did: to get what you want out of the deal.

Jesus went into Jerusalem not knowing what to expect. God-man, for all of his God-ness, did not know if he was going to be accepted or rejected, much less crucified. And, when faced with the anxieties of a man anticipating death, God-man looked a lot like man. I’ve argued elsewhere that it was necessary for God to become man because, for all that God knows, he could not fully understand the human condition until he became a part of it, hence, Jesus was an absolutely necessary development. Jesus did the best he could, but don’t think for a moment that, in the garden, the sweating drops of blood was for an amusing literary flourish; these are signs of a man not knowing what is to come. How does the human manifestation of a being who only knows being because that being is being itself deal with the absence of being? Like anybody else. This is a huge, but forgotten part of the power of the gospel; Jesus’ humanity. When his humanity is taken from him wrongfully, what do you expect?

Remember the garden: to disobey God is to begin to die. The wages of sin stuff is not exclusive to Romans or Paul, this is axiomatic going back to the beginning. So what happens when God dies? Or a man who never earned a death paycheck?

Empty tomb.

We believe in the saving power of the gospel not because of Jesus’ death, but because his resurrection has (and rightfully ought to have) serious ramifications on the way we do things. Too often, it seems that we like to relish the fact that someone died so that we don’t have to, instead of staring at the empty tomb and realizing that they way we conduct day-to-day business doesn’t line up with the resurrected Christ. We like being saved, but ignore or hate living as though these things actually happened.

This is why I get frustrated with all the status updates: if you need a reminder about the thing that is of your ultimate concern, and your ultimate concern is in what you get out of the passion deal, that trivializes Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection. The resurrection is not about what Jesus did for us, it is about God’s ultimate victory over his enemies, and the expiration of the old order. We are not to be a people governed by the crucifixion, but the resurrection precisely because the resurrection shows us how ridiculous it is to be beholden to institutions and systems of control that are well-intended but futile in terms of efficacy.

The Jewish Messiah died at the hands of the Romans, was buried in a Jewish tomb and guarded by Roman soldiers. The resurrection tells us that it is for everyone while making everything else irrelevant, even the crucifixion, defying even cause and effect. Jesus Christ, the living and victorious God-man, is a subject without a clause, whose resurrection invites us to become subjects without clauses, in so doing deliberately choosing to be reconciled to full relationship with God. And yet here we are, Christians in the West, incapable of transcending the clauses of Christian culture, still living as though we are, like those referred to in Acts 15, to take on the yoke of tradition, forgetting that no one could hack it. Not to pick on anyone, but what exactly is the point of celebrating Passover, 21st century Evangelical Christians? We are so bound to the constructs that we forget that the work of Christ and the mandate for those who hold faith in the authority of Christ is fundamentally supracultural and is as such ill-suited for our programmatic tendencies. So we pick and choose, thankful for what God has done for us and still unable to share that dynamic reality without resorting to our clauses.

The rest of the world isn’t stupid. They’re wise to our game. And yet we won’t stop playing by our defined rules! The same rules that keep many from ever seeing a legitimate representation of the resurrected Christ, the same rules that demanded the life of an innocent man. History is repeating itself, and yet we’d rather complain about the current state of affairs and hide in 24-7 prayer bomb shelters than face the simple fact that history repeats for those who forget, i.e., us. We may as well the conspirators of John 11 than the people of post-ascension Acts.

Other people matter more than we do. While churches all over America will be full of people who feel obligated to do their twice-a-year duty and those who are overly excited to feel good about themselves and their salvation and those relatively few who are sincere, there are lots of people who won’t set foot anywhere near a community of faith, or a church building. All the cantatas and bait-and-switch in the world won’t get everyone, much less those who need it most. Now more than ever, we need a restored vision of the resurrected Christ, unencumbered by our crappy contexts and exercises in futility. People don’t need church, and they certainly don’t need musicals. They need to see that subjects don’t need clauses, they need to see a people dominated by nothing more or less than the resurrection.

This is why I’m rethinking Good Friday. My salvation means nothing if it does not translate into the language of those who need it most, that is, those who refuse to come to us on our terms. In the case where I have to choose between being a Christian or being Christ to those who need it, even at the cost of not appearing Christian-like, I’ll take the latter every time.

Though this is largely heavy-handed and cynical, it is Resurrection Sunday. But it’s also a day. People will be born today, people will die. And there is still much work to be done, in house and out.