SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA GOD-DAMN IT TO SAVE IT…

I could not agree more with this post on Novel Rocket. The modern definition of what is considered Christian is extremely narrow and restrictive and small. It tends to completely ignore evil in a misguided and juvenile attempt to be always clean, happy, pure, and safe (especially supposedly pure and safe) while completely ignoring the fact that the World is rarely that way.

I call it Cotton Candy Christianity. A pansified, effeminate, wholly emasculated Christianity. A naïve attempt to see the World (and Man) as they wish, not the world (or Man) as it/he actually is. An attempt to make the world a world of talk shows and quaint diplomacy and and polite, watery conversations and wish fulfillment instead of what it really often is, a world of brutality and struggle and barbarism and bloodshed. But you cannot cure bloodshed with spilt ink, or curses with vapid, watery conversations and quotes about how everything will be okay in the end. A real disease requires a real Cure, not just a pretty dialogue. Everyone today wants their “Voice to be heard,” but I’ll be damned if anyone has anything much worth listening to about how damned this world really is. Or what should be done about it as a result.

Christ was a man, and all man at that. He didn’t fear evil, he ran at it. Went for the throat of it. He struggled, he fought, he was unafraid of what he faced and did not seek to shelter himself from it, the people around him, or the realities of the world he lived in. He shed his own blood and faced great physical torment and execution not to produce a feel-good story about how evil and injustice was really just a pleasant pastel-colored little tale of psychosocial misunderstanding, or that human sin and wrongdoing was really just a song of sixpence everyone could afford to sing in the shower.

He showed that evil and sin and wrong-doing and death and injustice must eventually be chased down, engaged, wrestled to the ground, strangled, and buried.

That kind of thing takes a man’s effort, a truly manly effort, regardless of whether you are a man, a woman, or a child. Yet today many people are far, far too accommodating (to all the wrong things) and soft for what is actually required.

They are more offended by harsh and brutally honest talk than they are by bloodshed, murder, rape, terrorism, malignancy, and evil. You can automatically offend a lot of modern Christians with a single profane word (that will stick deep in his craw, and his memory), but let him see countless examples of murder, rape, terrorism, slavery, and tyranny and he is more momentarily “saddened and shocked and distressed” than he is angered or offended or moved to action. (God forbid he should ever be moved to real action…) I don’t know what you call that but I don’t call it anything resembling real manhood, much less any form of spiritual righteousness. Or effectiveness.

Oh yes, the secular society cusses a lot, probably a lot too much, but never at the right things. Only about self-absorbed things. But the modern Christian is so God-damned entirely self-absorbed and soft in the middle that they can’t God Damn anything, especially those things that God just naturally deans. And that’s exactly why the world is so God Damned. The secular man thinks God-damn means nothing (it doesn’t, it means something very specific and real and important), but the Christian, the poor little modern Christian thinks the world means so little it won’t even bother to God Damn it to save it. It’s pathetic and effeminate in both directions, but if you ask me, it’s especially pathetic of the Christians who are at least supposed to have a Real Mission in this world. Most of us sure as hell don’t, of course, but we’re sure as hell supposed to, or sure as hell Hell is certain.

Today’s Christianity, especially the Christianity of the West, is that of a naïve, sheltered, spoiled juvenile who cannot and does not want to understand evil or see the world as it is – yet Christians and others who live in Syria and Iraq and Africa and Pakistan and the Middle East, and Central America, many parts of Asia and Central America, they know an altogether different world.

And an altogether different from of Christianity and manhood.

Words are but wind but here in the West the wind is composed entirely of words rarely worth the speaking. We warm ourselves with entirely ineffective and insubstantial words that comfort ourselves in our moments of petty personal distress, but Real Words we never speak.

Here, because we are sheltered like little children, we live like little children. Here our tales are all of the fables of Fairy Land where no harm comes to call and all dwell forever in an artificial and unreal paradise we make for ourselves. Naturally (or preternaturally – take your pick), as a result, even our literature is anemic, naïve, and unfailingly puny.

We insistently and persistently see an unreal world, we talk endlessly of an unreal world, we greatly desire an unreal world, yet we do nothing to truly change the Real World for the better.

Until all of that changes neither will we.

 

7 Christian Classics that Could Not Be Published in Today’s Christian Market

 

I guest posted at Speculative Faith a couple years back, and my article Why Fiction is the Wrong Vehicle for Theology garnered some lively, if not predictable, responses. One of my favorite comments was from Melissa Ortega (read it HERE) in which she rattled off “classic novels” that DO contain some heavy theological elements. She writes:

There are few books that sermonize more than Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables or his Hunchback of Notre Dame. Charles Dickens sermonizes a great deal in A Christmas Carol. G.K. Chesterton’s Napolean of Notting Hill is as Free Will vs. Destiny type of story as one can get. And who can forget his Man Who Was Thursday? with its sermon at the end on becoming, ourselves, the Accuser? The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is an inside-out sermon that preaches on a multitude of sins….from Hell’s point of view, of course. And the Great Divorce steps on very, very specific toes every third paragraph at least…

UP AND AWAY

My three new blogs are now fully up and running:

 

WYRDWEND – My Literary, Art, and Writing blog, covering my fiction and non-fiction writings, my poetry, my songwriting, and my art: https://wyrdwend.wordpress.com/

 

LAUNCH PORT – My Business, Capital, and Invention blog and the blog of OPEN DOOR COMMUNICATIONS: http://launchport.wordpress.com/

 

and,

 

TOME AND TOMB – My Gaming and Game Design blog: http://tomeandtomb.wordpress.com/

 

You are most welcome to visit all three. They will also soon all be cross-linked. I hope you enjoy the content and there is much more to come. This is just the beginning.

 

Thanks,

 

Jack.

THE DREAMER’S DILEMMA

I’ve recently noticed that I’ve been composing a lot of music in my head. I even woke up with a rather elaborate theme running through my head this morning.

However I’m a rusty composer with very little time to compose right now. Most of my effort is going into my novel, my inventions, and my businesses. So the best I’m able to do at the moment is sketch out a few phrases and motifs.

I’ve long had a dream though of going somewhere for about a year or so and doing nothing else but compose. Man, I’d really like to. But I just don’t have the time.

A DAY IN THE FIKE

Today I go into work and get asked to impersonate somebody. Always finding other people more interesting than anyone else I take the dart they’re pitching, then swing out wide of center. Bullseye! So right off the bat I know that yesterday has already passed tomorrow, as they say in the biz. Well, I psyche myself up because Russians sound funny when they talk. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve got quite a few friends south of Kamchatka, but I’ve never liked Eskimo pies. They make me gassy.

So, I get all painted up, dressed down, and put into costume, then go for a little stroll downtown into the local Red Square, when who should I run into but an old buddy of mine, also in the get up.

“Whatcha doing here man?”

“Oh, you know, the old shake, rattle and roll.”

“You get pop corn and fries with that?” Well, we both laugh at that one. It was pretty good for being on the spot, I gotta admit.

“Did you get rolled last week?”

“Nah,” he says. “That’s next week.”

“How can you predict that?”

“Because the old man is a galactophagist.” Now it’s my time to guffaw.

“Who they painted you for this time?” Not sure I’m clear to talk I tell him Barney. He catches my drift and scratches his arse with his index finger. Which is better than the other way round.

“On the step now?” he asks.

“Yeah, my sweet is set and so I’m on spot.” So with that he gives me one on the down low and then he makes like a bunny. Two times in a row.

Next thing I go for a walk. On the way I audition a couple on the fritz and it looks like the mouthy mouse is gonna slug the dame. That’s a nuisance, what with me outta uniform, and instead made up like a Dimitri Colonel. It’s always like that, you’re not ready for the one thing and then the other happens. Still, no good deed goes unpunished so I amble over and take a poke at public relations. Well in the middle of a shout, with the gal all sobby, he suddenly sees me in the make and can’t decide where I should be. Then after a few words he decides he can’t make out where he should be either, and skeedaddles. I tell the donna it will be okay and to scoot home and set a grease fire before the firecracker returns. She thanks me and I’m off again to sightsee. Soak up the town.

About ten of the clock I’ve had enough of that and since my daughter has her final acting class about 11:45 I call in and tell em to skip the intros, I’ll go straight for the throat. Well, I drop two dimes on the patio and stroll on into the joint. Three of the big ones meet me, but being far more experienced than them I let my guard down anyway so as not to catch anybody off the floor. After one of em decides to wipe the walls to make a show, the other two skip me in to see the man.

Now there he is fatter than life and ugly squared. Still, the smell is tolerable so I sit down with a flourish and make the secret handsign. To which he stands up and salutes like his mother is there. Okay, so formalities aside I ask him if he’s prepared. It’s a simple enough question but where he thinks it’s going I have no idea because he’s flumstrusstered by the whole talking in words bit.

I repeat my lines in dog barks and that does no good either because suddenly his mutt runs in and her legs are freshly shaved. What the hell? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. So now that we’re all on the same page again you can see why I’m gettin annoyed. Not in the playbook, one ball, two strikes, and somebody is gonna hav’ta call for sunshine before a washout. And me without my secretary.

Since this ain’t going nowhere I decide to have a seat and let my previous sit down stand awhile. Now I’m impersonating both of em, which sounds a lot harder than it looks, especially with this crowd. Well he gets confused which is where I like to play when I’m the talker. But I ain’t saying nothing and so that’s the part that’s hard to figure, for both of us. As things stand and sit I decide to go poco a poco.

“Who you gonna call?” I pass the call sign. It’s a play on words but since he still can’t make out the game I let him catch a fly instead. Then he opens his mouth and it flies back out again. Getting tired of all this back and forth I settle on the sideways, which is always a good diagonal move. Well, a bit more of that and I tap my watch to show him that time flies when you’re having fun but all bad things must end by hook or by crook. Being crooked he gets my jive and smuggles something out of his number two monkey. I say, “How bout that,” and tip him the high hat, but with just enough parfume that he thinks I mean it to smell that way.

So Ooday and Coosay hold my hands as we walk out, just in case I trip and something drops out that can embarrassed us all. But that ain’t really what aggravates me about the whole thing. What really bothers me is that as I’m dedressing it suddenly strikes me that one of my socks is black and one deep, navy blue. What if I had been accidentally disemboweled and then cut up for square? The boys in the morgue would have spotted the foot hose thing right away and then where would I have been? It’s hard to explain that kinda thing and make it seem believable.

Which is exactly why I always come unprepared.

WHO KNOWS – from Human Effort

Who knows what a man may become?

But one thing he will never become. What he never attempts.