Switchfoot -- "Mess of Me"

Here's the single from Switchfoot's new CD Hello Hurricane. I like it:



I've often toyed with the idea of me being my own worse enemy. I've got a line that I plan on developing into a full poem: "I am often the antagonist in my own story."

I have enjoyed Switchfoot for some time, I really appreciate Jon Foreman's poetic lyrics (Nothing Is Sound is one of my favorites CDs of all time). In this song, I particularly liked "I've made a mess of me/I wanna get back to less of me/I've made a mess of me/I wanna spend the rest of my life alive." Good stuff.

Do you like?

Jesus Christ > Rocky Balboa

And I think this proves it:


I really don't know how I feel about this. It's along the lines of the old school Jesus is My Coach statues, only...terrifying. Plus there are two others in this series.

Is it a good idea to represent Jesus in this fashion? Is there something wrong with it?

via Jesus Needs New PR

Of Marvel + Disney

One of the better things I've seen on the subject:



If you care, what do you think will happen?

Of Christian Excellence In Frisbee

Say what you will, Jon Acuff knows how to blog. He linked back to this post about how Christians are notoriously good at disc-based sports:

"I can't prove this, but I think Christians might be better at frisbee than non-Christians. I know that doesn't sound very scientific, but it feels right. Roughly 94% of the Christians I know can really throw the Frisbee well. They're good at ultimate frisbee, can play disc golf, and can even throw a pretty accurate flick or sidearm if you will. The Christians that can't throw the frisbee? Probably backsliding."

I can agree. There are very few Christians I know who actually dislike tossing a frisbee around, and while not all of them are Carleton College's UPA team or Nate Doss, they often know their way around a frisbee.

Are Christians, as a group, good at frisbee?

Of God's Identity

Here is a delightfully well done music video to The Michael Gungor Band's song "White Man"



It always make me very happy when good work is done by people with good theology. There is no better combination than good art and good theology.

What do you think? Do you agree with the whole song, part of it, or none of it? Why?

via Matthew Paul Turner on Jesus Needs New PR

Of Perceptive Reality

I think I want to keep a record of all of my stupid, selfish little thoughts not so that I can go back later and see how stupid and selfish I was, but to realize that at that time, my stupidity and selfishness were my reality.

I struggle a lot. Actually, struggle isn't the right word, surrender would be a bit more accurate. But when I do, I always claim that I "don't know" what to do, that I "have tried, but can't" break free from my "spiritual depression." On the one hand, I could have used (and continue to need) people to tell me to quit whining and turn to Jesus, on the other, at those times where I hit the pits of Sheol-esque emotion, those are very real statements.

At those times, my perception is my reality because it is controlling my action. That being said, I can break free from those depths and am learning how to do that each and every day.

I just feel like it would be interesting to see what my perceptive reality is at those times.

Of Turning From Evil

Joshua Harris on the susceptibility we have to falling into evil when we are not dedicated to turning from it. Not only insightful, but the illustration he uses is pretty well performed and quite hilarious.

"Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones."
--Proverbs 3:7-8 (ESV)

Of Happy Rebellion

Just got introduced, via Dinosaur Comics, to the webcomic Rock, Paper, Cynic. While some of his strips are less appropriate, there are some that are quite funny:


I can't tell you how many times I've thought this, that just being content is close to the most revolutionary thing you can do, because everyone, everyone, everyone is going crazy in some small way or another. So if you could just be happy with a balloon on a cool fall day, you might just be more insurgent than Marilyn Manson, Thomas Jefferson and Ché all rolled together. Which would be a fearsome sight in and of itself.

Of Blogging Technique

I've found that I hate trying to read a blog post that is long, not even excessively so, unless I am super excited about the topic it is discussing. For that reason, I try to keep my posts short, and even if they aren't, I try to break up the paragraphs so it is easier to read.

Still, I think that keeps some people from commenting because it seems like it's only "T.J.'s short thoughts" and does not require response. Or maybe I just don't talk about things that are interesting enough.

One technique I've notice Jon Acuff uses at Stuff Christians Like is to ask a question at the end of most of his posts.

So, what do you think? Are shorter blogs better? Are shorter paragraphs easier to read?

Of Resonating Literature

Sometimes literature just resonates with you. It takes your meager circumstances and elevates them or mirrors them in the higher plane of that which you are reading.

"When once he was within the cabin there was nothing to do but kiss. He avoided her mouth—the mouth reveals so much, but she wouldn't be content until she had pulled his face round a left the seal of her return on his lips. 'Oh my dear, here I am.'

'Here you are,' he said

...

Did my lies really start, he wondered, when I wrote that letter? Can I really love her more than Louise? Do I, in my heart of hearts, love either of them, or is it only that this automatic pity goes out to any human need—and makes it worse? Any victim demands allegiance.

...

'Missing Mass on Sunday's a mortal sin, just as much as adultery.'

'Adultery's more fun,' he said with attempted lightness.

...

...he felt his whole personality crumble with the disintegration of lies.

...

'Why do we go on like this—being unhappy?'

'It's a mistake to mix up the ideas of happiness and love,' Scobie said with desperate pedantry, as though, if he could turn the whole situation into a textbook case, as they had turned Pemberton, peace might return to both of them, a kind of resignation.

...

One ought not to lie to two people if it could be avoided—that way lay complete chaos, but he was tempted terribly to lie as he watched her face on the pillow. She seemed to him like one of those plants in nature films which you watch age under your eye.

...

'But I simply don't understand. If you believe in hell, why are you with me now?'

How often he though, lack of faith helps one to see more clearly than faith. He said, 'You are right, of course: it ought to prevent all this. But the villages on the slopes of Vesuvius go on...And then, against all the teaching of the Church, one has the conviction that love—any kind of love—does deserve a bit of mercy. One will pay, of course, pay terribly, but I don't believe on will pay for ever.

...

'I can regret the lies, the mess, the unhappiness, but if I were dying now I wouldn't know how to repent the love.'

...

'It's not much good confessing if I don't intend to try. . . .'

'Well then,' she said triumphantly, 'be hung for a sheep. You are in—what do you call it—mortal sin? now. What difference does it make?'

He thought: pious people, I suppose, would call this the devil speaking, but he knew that evil never spoke in these crude answerable terms: this was innocence."

From Book III, Part I, Chapter I of Graham Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter. Read. Buy.