Cool Stuff to Read

Postmodernity
By Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars Hill Church, Seattle, Wash.
written in 1999

Defining postmodernity is a very unpostmodern thing to do. Categories, definitions, dates and such feel like impositions forced upon seasons and experiences for the purpose of simplifying and marginalizing things profound. Nonetheless, I will attempt in the wandering stream of consciousness that follows to take you on a journey through the emerging matrix of our world that is not intended as an academic treatment of the issue. Instead, I will write whatever comes to mind for one hour and then stop because anything more than that makes me pop Advil to dull the throb in my three pound, fallen brain. I will also provide the disclaimer that I write this on my rainy day off in Seattle listening to the new Creed album while recovering from a potentially fatal dose of house paint inhalation following my recent Bob Villa adventure on my little piece of the Promised Land.

For the Christian conversation, postmodernity is a sub-topic within the post-Christian world. The troubles began with the well meaning Constantine who shifted the Christian faith from a marginal rag tag of persecuted also-rans to a viable first rate religion. In so doing, he wed the state and church, and their bizarre freak show child became known as Constantinianism, or what the American founding fathers called civil religion. As such, the church and her kingdom experienced great favor and freedom within the confines of the kingdom of the king. Over time, it became vogue and chic to be a “christian”, to the degree that many nations fund churches with tax dollars, and in the U.S. every president has claimed to follow Jesus and commenced their violation of most of His commands with a public prayer from a highly trained professional. The religious right has so committed itself to this nutjob sitcom that they have attempted to revise history and sell the myth that the founding fathers were all good Christian folks with minivans who attended fundie churches on Sundays and got the Constitution on tablets of stone from deist Thomas Jefferson’s encounter with the triune god (slavery, deism, and rationalism) upon a grassy knoll.

A little over 1000 years into this doomed marriage Rene Descartes was commissioned by the now wealthy church to create a defense of the Christian faith against the emerging academic elite that dismissed ecclesiastical dogma as outdated and unfounded superstition. Why? Because he was not a Calvinist who believed God could fight his own battles. After all, some major assets were at stake and so big Descartes needed to defend the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for a fee of course. Forgetting that God’s only defense of Himself is saying that people who don’t know that are fools, Decartes had to created a big bottom piece upon which to construct his giant Jenga game of philosophical inquiry. And what was his bottom piece? “I think therefore I am.” From the firing of this rationalist shot, the human race toward dis-enlightenment commenced, as the only thing that could be trusted was the individual and their mind. Armed with the scientific method, the four hundred year marathon sprinted from scientific rationalism (we can only trust what the mind can prove through “objective” scientific testing and retesting) to deistic naturalism (the world is a closed system that runs like a machine according to laws that cannot be violated, even by God), to skepticism (since God and miracles cannot be proven by science and violate our natural laws, it is unreasonable to commit to religion as anything more than good morals for social order) to atheism (God does not exist, or as Nietzsche saw it, God was a concept that we killed). This handing of the baton from one runner to another, combined with the evolutionary myth that we are born good and getting better all the time thanks to education, science and caffeine, resulted in the oppression of the less fit and killing of those nations resisting “progress.” We also learned from the industrial, scientific, and technological revolutions that science is good for more than creating television altars where the entire family can be numbed into a vegetative state by sports, game shows, and people getting kicked in the groin recorded on the grainy Blair Witch footage of hand-held family cameras and shown on America’s Funniest Home Videos of Modern Educated Highly Evolved Well Educated People Laughing At Other Highly Evolved Well Educated People Getting Kicked In The Groin. Yes, we could build bombs and guns and kill the bad guys. And so we did. And, the twentieth century witnessed more bloodshed and groin shots than all of human history to that point combined.

Convinced the race should be called off before the world ended, some postmodern philosophers decided to pull the bottom piece out from under the now towering Jenga game that Descartes started. Men like Jacques Derrida began taking critiques raised by Wittgenstein, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Kant and raising objections against the modern project. Is the concept of rugged isolated individualism a dangerous myth? Is the human mind entirely trustworthy? Is it possible that objectivity is not possible? Is not naturalism an unproven faith assumption? Is not the human condition evil and not good? Is it truly funny to get kicked in the groin?

And so postmodernity began. Not as a unified system of thought, nor a collective dream for the future. Instead, it is a critique; a deconstruction of a kingdom that laid a foundation with Constantine and became a high rise with Descartes. As the bottom piece of the Jenga game is nearly entirely kicked out, the western church finds itself being dragged from the center of power and influence like a spoiled bratty kid who turns dead weight and throws a fit on the floor because they dropped their ice cream cone. The western church has lost any concept of missions from the margins since they have been in bed with the king so long and enjoyed the benefits of his palace so greatly that any concept of leaving is unthinkable. Now, kicked out of the palace and sent by God as a people on mission into the chaos of the collapsing world, the mighty and empowered sent people of God packed up their evangelical fish baptized minivans and headed to the suburbs at breakneck speed in an attempt to set up shop, hawk some Christian gifts, market some cheesy Christian bands to disadvantaged kids whose fundie parents never allowed them to watch MTV, invite their friends into the ghetto, and erect the walls; tossing over the occasional moral hand grenade against abortion doctors and homos and calling it “evangelism,” the good news of the loving and well marketed Rambo-Christ.  Meanwhile, the mainline church continues to live in a state of denial, kind of like my buddy who was once cool and is now fat and bald and married with four kids who kick him in the groin. He drives his Camaro past our old high school whistling at girls because in his tweaked Ridlin head he’s still a young fresh fellow. Likewise, mainliners somehow look at empty buildings with a handful of grey haired faithful and talk about the good old days when people knew they existed, back when Noah was their bishop and the organ on the Ark was powered by the Spirit of God directly, and simply think they can outlive time, which has passed them by.

Meanwhile, the world is on the internet forming a global nation. Information is expanding at a rate unparalleled in human history. Everyone is spiritual and atheists are the last of the fundamentalists. People know they are sinful, but without the Gospel they fall into depression and run to shrinks and drug companies to cope. People are longing to connect in community as whole people while the church remains a goofy collection of individual minds with very bad pop music. Filmmakers have become the new preachers, telling spiritual parables to a listening world (i.e. Seven. The Matrix, The Devil’s Advocate). Meanwhile, nutty, Christian, end-times-prophecy-Kazinski’s throw books on the shelves and films into the theaters trying to predict when we’ll get off the postmodern roller coaster, while the lost try to figure out how to squeeze ten minutes of semi-sanity in our breakneck isolated selfish debt ridden sexually confused lonely world temporarily propped up by Viagra and Prozac.

In it all, Jesus with tear-stained cheeks cries out to believers and non “Come to me all you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Finally, some good news.

Copyright 1999 Mark Driscoll.  All rights reserved.

Mark Driscoll is the pastor of Mars Hill Fellowship in Seattle.  He enjoys (house) painting.

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Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
By John Coleman, Founder of the Weather Channel, 55-Year Veteran Meteorologist,
and 7-Year Meteorologist for ABC’s “Good Morning, America!”
Speech given before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

The future of our civilization lies in the balance.

That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.

With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.

Here is my rebuttal.

There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.

Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.

Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?

The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.

Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.

The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.

All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.

Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.

Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.

The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.

May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.

Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.

So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.

So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.

To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure. Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that’s enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming. It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard. After all the media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it’s pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.

So who is going to go against all of that power? Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.

I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.

In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.

I am very serious about this issue. I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.

The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.

So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy. We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.

So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.

I love this civilization. I want to do my part to protect it.

If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.

My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.

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Oneness
By Mike Mason
Excerpt from The Mystery of Marriage

Mike Mason has written the most amazing book on marriage that I have stumbled across thus far in my wanderings. The title is The Mystery of Marriage. I read an excerpt from this book at nearly every wedding ceremony I officiate. Here is a portion from the chapter entitled “Oneness.” I read this passage at the marriage of Courtney Kennon and Wendell Crusenberry on Sandbridge Beach, May 10, 2008:

At the beginning of creation God saw one thing that wasn’t good: “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone’” (Genesis 2:18).

God identified an incompleteness in his creation, and the answer to this was Eve. Eve was created (and with her, the order of marriage) to make humanity and all of creation strong and complete.

Through vulnerability comes strength, for God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paradoxically, marriage makes people stronger by making them more vulnerable. Vulnerability allows for intimacy—or as the word is sometimes rendered, into-me-see. Marriage exploits the fact that humans are not opaque, but are full of holes. Eyes, mouths, ears, sexual orifices are the channels for intimate communion. Through our cracks, love seeps in.

A crack was how it all started, when God took part of the man’s side and made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man (Genesis 2:21–22). Ever since then the man and the woman have been trying to get back together, seeking to recapture their essential oneness. The act of sex goes only so far toward this goal. The more perfect solution is marriage.

God brought the first woman to the first man, and this has been his main business in the world—drawing people together into unity. Marriage is a living demonstration of the extravagant intimacy into which God wishes to draw all people.

Recently I talked to an engaged couple who described their relationship in rapturous tones. “It’s as if we’re on the same wavelength about everything,” they crowed. “We think the same way, have the same way of doing things, share the same vision and dreams. It’s amazing!”

If this is oneness, it won’t last. True oneness is distinguished less by its sameness than by its differences. One partner is a man, the other a woman, and that’s just the beginning. One is sociable, the other reclusive; one likes a down quilt for sleeping, the other a light blanket—and only half a light blanket at that! How can two such opposites ever be one? Might as well ask how a glove fits a hand. Oneness arises from differences fitting together, from contrasts corresponding.

How then do we know we’re one? I’ll work all day at my desk with the phone turned off, when suddenly it occurs to me to turn it on, and one minute later my wife calls. Or I’ll watch her prepare supper in the kitchen and I’ll know suddenly that right here, with her, is my home. Or we’ll walk together and I’ll take her hand, and all at once I’m not just aware of her, but I know she’s a part of me. Or we’ll talk or pray, and the words she says are the words I need to hear, the ones that fill in the blanks of my perplexity.

Oneness is the freedom to speak one’s mind to the other about absolutely anything. Oneness is being as comfortable with silence as with speech. Oneness is perfect trust. It’s acting the same way apart from one’s spouse as with him or her. It’s anticipating the other’s needs, and feeling the other’s hurts as one’s own. Oneness is habitually setting aside all differences for the simple joy of living in peace.

Thus, to be at peace with our spouse, we should simply be at peace. Over and over the Scriptures tell us, “Be at peace with each other … Don’t quarrel … Get rid of anger.” If only we could grasp who we’re truly yelling at, picking at, berating, manipulating. If only we could remember who lies in the bed beside us or looks back at us across the breakfast table. It is (or might as well be) ourselves! The apostle Paul reiterates this in Ephesians 5:28–29: “He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it.”

To pursue stubbornly our own way at the expense of oneness with our spouse is to play a self-defeating game. Our God is a relational God, which is why he created Adam and Eve. The image of God is not in the man alone but in a relationship. Only through loving, harmonious relationships can God be known, for he himself exists in such a relationship through the Trinity.

If you aren’t feeling one with your spouse, neither are you experiencing harmony and wholeness in your own soul. If you aren’t intimate with your spouse, intimacy with God will suffer. Indeed the way you feel right now toward your spouse is the way you feel toward God. Any shadow in the one relationship will necessarily fall upon the other.