I Don’t Need Your Handouts! I’m an Adult!

I am officially an adult”, a title I have inherited since graduating from college about a week ago.  It’s kind of funny, growing up all you hear is how you have to go to college if you want a decent job and how if you don’t go to college you are going to end up in some dead-end job where you are barely making ends meat.  Now that I am out of college and looking for one of these great jobs I was promised my entire life thanks to my college degree, I am being told to swallow my pride and take a job at a fast food company because “some income is better than no income”.  While that is true, this isn’t what was peddled to me for 13 years in public school.  I didn’t go $20,000 into debt to work at the same job the stoner from my high school has worked at since he was 16.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went to college and wouldn’t take it back for anything.  I’ve grown so much since going away to school and actually feel like I can live on my own and take of myself.  Not to mention that I met my fiancée at school and that alone is worth the $20,000 ($37,000 including hers) that I now owe the department of education.  It’s no wonder that we see things like Occupy Wall street popping up all over the nation.  Well sell our children these lies and delusions of grandeur about this magical world that a college degree will open up to them, and then we mock them for not wanting to take a job where they can’t even pay back the debt they occurred chasing this fantasy.

These next couple of weeks for me will be spent trying to find a job where I can support me and my future wife on (not to mention pay for a wedding).  I’m pretty optimistic though, I know that God provides… so I’m not too worried.  My fiancée and Best Friend are both working at camp this summer so I’m going to be experiencing a completely new level of boredom.  I have an interview with Roxane Laboratories set up, which from what I’ve heard and read is a great job to get in with.  Good pay and good benefits, so here’s hoping that works out.  I hope to get my driver’s license by the end of the month and if I can secure this job, get a car by the end of summer.  In a 7 month period I will have gotten engaged, graduated college, got my driver’s license, get my first big boy job, and get married.  It’s like I saved all my key life moments for the same time.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’12

Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis or reliable then my own meandering experience.  I will dispense this advice….now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, nevermind, you won’t understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded, but trust me in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind: the kind that blindsides you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy.  Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.  The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. (if you succeed in doing this, tell me how).

Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life.  The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of Calcium.  Be kind to your knees — you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t.  Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t.  Maybe you’ll divorce at 40; maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.

Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either.  Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions (even if you don’t follow them).

Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings: they’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but what a precious few should hold on.  Work hard to bridge the gaps and geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you
were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old; and when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you.  Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse, but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you are 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.  Advice is a form of nostalgia; dispensing it is a way of wishing the past from the disposal–wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me, I’m the sunscreen.

Ninja Turtles

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are probably one of my favorite intellectual properties, right up there with Star Wars.  Unfortunately they haven’t shared in the same success as Star Wars has.  The Turtle’s glory days were the early 90′s (when I was growing up), they had a super popular Saturday morning cartoon and a successful movie franchise going on.  Then the cartoon ended and Turtles III bombed and that was the end of the golden age of the turtles.

Then in 2003, the cartoon came back on Fox Saturday mornings.  It wasn’t as childish as the early 90′s version so I liked it a lot considering I was 13.  It actually gave me a reason to wake up early on Saturday mornings again.  A few years later, a fourth turtle movie was produced in complete CGI.  It wasn’t bad really, though I think most fans love the live-action ones more because they seemed so much more real.  5 Years later, enter Nickelodeon.

Nickelodeon recently has purchased the rights to the turtles franchise and has begun production on both a new TV show (2012) and a reboot of the film franchise (2013).  And I for one am super excited.  I love that every generation of kids since I was a kid have had the privilege of being exposed to one of the turtle franchises, rather it was the original cartoon, the 2003 cartoon, or now the Nickelodeon version.  Everyone has their own opinion of which generation is best (just like pokemon fans), but from an unbias fan, they are all good on their own ground.

Recently, criticism has erupted at Michael Bay (producer of the new Turtle movie) because he made the comment about the turtles being of alien origin.  This remark has started what the turtle faithful has dubbed “Turtlegate”.  However, I think everyone needs to take a step back and wait for more information.  In the original comic, the turtles were mutated from a canister from T.C.R.I., with the “C” standing for cosmic.  It could be that the new movie is taking a more true approach than any of the previous versions have.  Can’t wait to see how everything turns out!!

Turtle Power!!

PHONY2012

For some reason beyond me, people still seem to support the Kony movement.  I blogged earlier in the week about why I am not a supporter of Kony2012 and why I think other people shouldn’t be as well.  And since my post, even more unflattering information has been exposed about Kony2012.

Kony hasn’t been in Uganda in about half a decade and we aren’t even sure he is still alive.  The Ugandan people know this and they are offended by the fact that we are taking away their dignity to “Capture Kony”.  In a recent airing of the Kony video in Uganda, the locals rioted.  Uganda is messed up and needs a lot of help, but not help from Kony, help from a corrupt government that the United States help put into power.  A government that has killed so many more people than Kony has been accused of killing.  But let’s not talk about that.  Speaking of which, it’s kind of suspicious that support for invading Uganda (and make no mistake, having our military go into another country is an invasion) is being drummed up shortly after billions of barrels of oil was found under Uganda’s soil.  But it’s not like our country would ever sell us an illegal invasion by telling us we were stopping a madman from hurting his native people, right? (Read: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc).

Just yesterday, Jason Russell (the main guy from the Kony video who brainwashed his kid into wanting to see Kony killed) was arrested for being intoxicated in public, doing a sexual act in public, and vandalizing cars in California yesterday.  This guy wants us to give him money (only about one-third of which will even make its way to Uganda, the other two-thirds go towards salaries which are obviously being used on drugs).  If you haven’t seen the TMZ video of this guy, you should check it out, be warned though it is NSFW.

And finally this video sums up how I think a lot of Christians should feel about this issue.  I disagree on him about the importance of Kony, but around 1:25 is when we starts talking about what all Christians should be talking about when it comes to Kony2012

Rich People Need The Gospel, Too.

Before I start, allow me to just clear something up.  Everyone needs the gospel.  There isn’t a group of people on the planet that doesn’t need the gospel.  There isn’t a single person on the planet that doesn’t need the gospel.  With that said, why are we only focused on the poor?

Christ makes it pretty clear that it will be very difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  I can name off the top of my head many local and national ministries aimed at helping the poor, and that’s great.  But I can’t really think of any ministries aimed at sharing the glory of Christ to the wealthy, and that’s not okay.  I think it’s become to the new cool thing to help and love the poor while we hate on and ignore the rich.  They have more stuff than else, so we don’t need to help their souls find Jesus.  It makes us bitter and not any better than the wealthy we criticize.  I was told recently that “true christians” are more concerned with poor people then any other group.  Not sure how accurate that is.

More than likely you are thinking of the poor person as the guy who has to go to the soup kitchen for a meal and the rich guy as the person in the 7 bathroom/5 bedroom house who has 4 cars.  Perhaps you are thinking of all THOSE rich people who need this message…hold on…if you are reading this… on a computer… in America, you are rich by any objective, historic, Biblical definition.

We are rich.  By any objective historic standard, everyone and all of us would be in the category of rich by the Bible’s standards. We have more than most people in history: more stuff, more food, more shelter, and more transportation than anyone in history. MIT economist Abhijt Banjerjee in his book Poor Economics maps out by city and country the population where 75% or more of the residents live on less than $2.00 a day.  It’s staggering.

My overall point, everyone needs the gospel.  Rich, poor, white, black, short, tall, etc.  EVERYONE needs the gospel.

_________

Next on Theory of The Phil: Why KONY 2012 is a load of crap no matter what your pastor says.

KONY2012

Reasons why I have been hesitant to jump on-board the Kony bandwagon.

1) The organization that produced the film, Invisible Children, is problematic.

• “Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production.” (source)
• “Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited.” (source)
• “In their campaigns, such organizations [as Invisible Children] have manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders.” (source)

2) The solution proposed in the video won’t work.

• The video demands the arrest of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, but the situation is more complex.  Arresting Kony will not have the dramatic impact the video creators propose.
• “It is no longer clear that the LRA represents a major threat to stability in the region.” (source)
• “The LRA is now reduced to about 200 fighters…. Rather than occupying villages, as the LRA did when they were stronger, they now primarily conduct 5-6 person raids on villages to steal food.” (source)
• “Finding Kony isn’t a simple thing to do. The areas in which he and his forces operate are dense jungle with little infrastructure.” (source)
• “Russell argues that the only entity that can find and arrest Kony is the Ugandan army. Given that the Ugandan army has been trying, off and on, since 1987 to find Kony, that seems like a troublesome strategy.” (source)
• “Kony continues to rely on child soldiers. That means that a military assault… would likely result in the death of abducted children.” (source)
• The big action they propose in the video, blanketing the cities of the world with Kony posters, supports this oversimplification of the problem.  It proposes a fun and slightly deviant action, but in pursuit of an ultimate goal that has more symbolic than practical value for Ugandans.

3) The video and campaign are unintentionally racist.

• It robs Ugandans of agency. (source)
• Invisible Children has no Africans on its board of directors and collects money for itself rather than for Ugandan organizations.  (source)
• The heroes of the film are white young people and adults from the US and Europe, particularly video narrator and campaigner Jason Russell.
• The victims are Ugandan children. Ugandan adults appear in the film to validate the work of Invisible Children, not to represent their own work.
• The video embodies the outdated idea of the “white man’s burden,” that white people improve the countries of the global south by intervening and enforcing their values, that the people who live in these countries cannot improve their countries alone.

 

Ron Paul and Isolationism

Calling Dr. Paul an isolationist comes from simply not understanding the significant differences between isolationism and non-interventionism, mainly, with the issue of trade.

Isolationism is the doctrine of completely isolating our country from the affairs of other nations, and focusing exclusively on the growth of our own country. Non-interventionism on the hand promotes trading with other nations, as a means to build good diplomatic relations, and for the betterment of all parties involved. Furthermore, it doesn’t rule out using military force as an option, but proponents feel that it should only be used as a last option, to come to the defense of an ally under attack, or more importantly, to defend our own country if under attack, or directly threatened by attack. Lastly, taking such military action as a last resort should only be done with the advice and support of the Congress. This policy is in sharp contrast to interventionism propagated by neoconservatives, which promotes upholding UN resolutions, overthrowing governments and replacing them ones of our own choosing, and other actions not related to our own direct security. In short, it promotes our country “policing the word”, which puts a hardship on the American people with the draining of resources and more importantly the loss of life, not to mention goes directly against the ideas of freedom of liberty. It’s hypocritical.

Tim Tebow

I am a Denver Broncos fan and I make no apologies for that, I’ve been a fan since I started watching football all the way back in 2003.  In those 8 years I’ve been a Denver fan, I can’t remember us ever having a season quite like this, nor can I remember a season that has been this fun to watch.  Obviously this has a lot to do with Tim Tebow.

Tim Tebow was drafted in the 2010 NFL draft by then coach Josh McDaniels (even though he was a terrible head coach, he knew the QB position better then anyone I would argue). McDaniels was fired before Tebow would start his first game, at the end of the 2010 season.  He would finish the season with a 1-2 record, with the sole victory coming against the Houston Texans in typical comeback fashion in which Tebow would pass for ever 300 yards.  Denver would finish the 2010 season with a 4-12 record and have the second overall pick in that Aprils draft (used to select rookie sensation, Von Miller).  Following the 2010 season, the NFL would go into lockout mode and Tim Tebow could not work with his new coach John Fox, new boss, John Elway, or have any communication with any member of the Broncos organization.  With a shorten preseason, Kyle Orton was placed in as starting QB.  I can’t say I blame Denver for this, Orton statistically has been an above average Quarterback, and with a shorten preseason, makes the most sense to start the more prepared Orton.  The 2011 Broncos began their season going 1-4, with their only victory coming at the hands of the overrated Bengals.  At this point, the Denver fans needed a change, insert Tebow.  Tebow replaced Orton halfway through a game against San Diego and almost finished a dramatic comeback.

Tebow is now 7-1 as Denvers starter this year and is poised to lead the team to the playoffs and make his first Pro-Bowl.  Is he the best passer in the NFL?  No, not by a long shot.  But since when is that all the Quarterback position entails?  Quarterbacking is more about leading then it is about making a pass look pretty.  Before Tebow took over, the Broncos were a combined 5-16 since the beginning of the 2010 Season.  With Tebow as the starter, they are 8-3.  Tebow somehow gets the other players to play better when he starts.  If you read any of the other players tweets, they are fully sold on Tebow as their leaders.  Von Miller, who should be NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year and an anchor for our new defense, has said on multiple occasions that Tebow is his guy and he will ride with Tebow until they die.

I fully believe that all the hate Tebow receives isn’t because he doesn’t possess the same skill set as Aaron Rogers, but because he is a follower of Christ and isn’t ashamed to tell everyone.  He openly prays during games, thanks God and gives him the glory during press conferences, and talks about his relationship with Christ in interviews.  And rightfully, that makes people feel uncomfortable.  People love to watch Christians fail and do things that hurt their testimony.  I remember when I told a Christian friend of mine that John Piper was taking a leave, she assumed it was because of marital infidelity.  The world just wants Christians to fail.

Why Do Christians Hate America?

According to George Barna: “With its 195 million unchurched people, America has become the new mission field. America has more unchurched people than the entire populations of all but 11 of the world’s 194 nations.”*

According to Lost in America, by Tom Clegg and Warren Bird, 2001: “The unchurched population in the United States is so extensive that, were it a nation, it would be the fifth-largest on the planet. . . . Researchers and analysts describe North America as the world’s third-largest mission field.”

According to Os Guiness, in World Evangelization, Vol. 18, No 65, 1993: “The three strongest national challenges to the Gospel in the modern world are Japan, Western Europe, and the United States.”

According to George Gallup in 1997, only ten years ago: “More than 44% of American adults 18 and over are unchurched; 120 million Americans have no substantial Christian memory.”

Barna affirms Gallup. Consider: “America’s secularization has gone from only 15% in the 1950s up to 40% in 2001; and headed for 60% percent by 2010!” (Secularization means basing the decisions of one’s life on a secular humanist, relativist moral world view. Judeo-Christian values and the Bible are no longer the moral foundation of decision making in life for the vast majority of Americans.)

According to America: An Emerging Mission Field in World Christian Encyclopedia, Second Edition p.27: “In 2000, the United States sent out 118,200 missionaries, but it also received 33,200. Ironically, the world’s largest missionary-sending country has now become the world’s largest missionary-receiving country.” Not to mention:
The world’s largest Buddhist temple is located in Boulder, CO, USA
The world’s largest Muslim training center is in New York City, USA
The world’s largest training center for transcendental meditation is in Fairfield, Iowa, USA

According to Leighthon Ford, evangelist and Christian leader, “North America is now the largest mission field in the English-speaking world” (Cities’ and surrounding areas’ concentrated populations make them obvious targets for sharing the Gospel).

The number of churches in Chicago has decreased by 900 in the last 10 years! In many cases what were once churches are now condominiums.

England, the once great Christian missionary-sending nation for centuries, before America, now has more mosques than churches, and must itself be reached all over again with the Gospel! We are on this same path.

The more I look into and pursue doing Urban Missions in America, the more anti-america sentiment I seem to come across.  I get sarcastic comments about how I think America is the only country worthy of salvation, comments on how I don’t care about other nations or tribes who need the gospel.  I understand that the church has glamorized overseas missions (and not undeservingly, it’s crucial) and that being a missionary in America is greatly looked down upon.  When someone puts as their facebook status something about how mission work is needed in a different country, everyone comments about how they are praying for that country, how much work is needed there, etc.  When I change my status to facts about how America needs the gospel, I get attacked from Christians who tell me I attacking overseas missions.  This has me ask the question, why do American Evangelical Christians, hate America?

It’s Not About Encouragement!!

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me or inferred that the Christian community should only be about encouragement, I would have enough money to start a church that would continue to feed this false belief.

It’s amazing how blind people can actually be when it comes to the role of Christians and the Church.  The popular and widespread belief seems to be that the Christian communities sole purpose should be to encourage one another and make one another feel good about themselves, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.  The ideology that the Church exists to make us feel better about ourselves makes Christianity all about us, it turns our religion into an idol.  The Church (Christians) exit for one reason, to glorify God and to delight in him.

This isn’t going to make me any fans, but I’m sick of the “Cultural Christian” who just wants to use the death and resurrection of our Lord as an excuse to make themselves feel good and meet new people.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there is anything wrong with encouraging one another, we are commanded to do it after all; but it should come as a distant second place behind glorifying God.  When we place encouraging people in front of the teaching of scripture and the study of God, it’s an idol.