Time-Travel Worship Service

This is from a live web stream so I can only assume that the video is fairly recent. However, if it didn’t say “Live Streaming” up in the corner, and with the poor sound, and clothes and church decorations straight from the distant past, what century and decade would you locate the style of this… uh,… ‘worship’?

I’m guessing the most reasonable explanation is that these church members traveled through time with an ancient copy of their service to display how Christians use to ‘praise’ God or something… I don’t know. It was probably considered pretty weird even back then!

Old-timey weird marching praise and worship activate!

(video via Christian Nightmares)

Perspective and Hindsight Are Good Things

“Well, perspective is 20/20.”

Sometimes, it seems to me, that when people say this cliche it has a negative connotation to it: “Yeah, I know you’re right, but that’s only because you’re making that observation after the fact.”

But is learning from the past, or even making obvious deductions from past events really a bad thing? I would contend that human beings have a wonderful gift in being able to remember and asses the past, and then use that knowledge to learn and make better decisions in the future.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. ~ Patrick Henry

Of course, there is always the inherent danger of obsessing over the past and living in regrets, shame, and guilt. However, I believe there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from our past experiences, successes, and failures. Furthermore, I would like to be the sort of person who could asses my past experiences and be honest about when I failed as a person. Not obsess over those failures but take measures to insure, as best as I could, that I responded or acted better in any new situation. To me, this is a significant aspect in growing in maturity and striving to be a better person to those you interact with on a daily basis. It involves honesty, the ability to admit mistakes, and the courage to take any measures available to grow as a functioning human being.

I am married and I have a social group of friends. I know from my own experience that when my wife has identified ways in which I’m acting that are not necessarily positive for our relationship, that our marriage has dramatically improved when I have taken the appropriate steps to correct my attitude or actions. Sometimes this takes help from outside yourself and the assistance of a professional.

Re-assessing the past is also an excellent way to test theological and philosophical ‘belief’ systems. The human brain is wired to see patterns and make connections. Sometimes those patterns are false–though they will seem very real–and the connections are tenuous at best. Pat answers and advice often seem ‘right’ when every thing is going along fairly smoothly in your life.

(via Naked Pastor)

But life is random; it is chaotic.

The human experience can be characterized by joy, happiness, and laughter.Playing golf on a beautiful sunny day. A bike ride with a friend. A child running to jump into your arms when you come home. Life can have great existential fulfillment.

It can also go very wrong.

A heart attack. A cancer diagnosis. A car accident. A child runs out for a ball or is left unattended at a pool for a couple of minutes. War. Fire can kill you. Water can kill you; heck drinking too much water can kill you… there are a lot of ways to die!

Existence; and then suddenly: non-existence.

Chaos…

Shallow salesmen package ‘Sermons’, ‘Platitudes’, and ‘Principles’ offering to give a person the illusion of control, or claim to give knowledge to understand how things “really” are… but then life happens. Or maybe more appropriately: death, sickness, and chaos happen; and the illusion of control is wrenched away or the ‘understanding’ is found wanting. How could this happen? Why is God doing this to me? Why is the universe not giving me my every selfish whim and desire?

Pat answers are always shattered on the anvil of experience by the hammer of life. ~ Scott Bailey

Functionally, this experience of emotional pain or mental anguish is known as cognitive dissonance. It can be extremely difficult to experience; I know, I’ve gone through it a few times in my life. But I plead with you, when it happens don’t run away into some coping mechanism. Stop, identify the pain or confusion, take stock of some of the faulty expectations or beliefs that are causing the dissonance, and reassess and learn!

Become BETTER!

We do not want to be stuck in the past, but we certainly want to learn from it and use it to stimulate our growth as human beings and make the experience of this life a more profitable and enjoyable journey…

Perspective and hindsight are good things: learn from them and use them!

———————————————————————————–

The connection may seem illogical to some, but it was actually Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann that stimulated my thinking (inb4u: to use a term loosely!) on this matter.

Not long ago both candidates were sure that ‘God’ was leading them to run for the presidency (here’s one link, but there is much more material concerning this on the web). After becoming ‘God’s’ choice, both candidates eventually dropped out of the Republican candidacy race once it became apparent that they didn’t have a snowflakes chance in hell of winning. Perry is, let’s be honest here, an epic [insert pejorative preferably with vulgarity], and Bachmann is a bigot and very likely certifiably crazy.

But ‘God’ was leading them to run… I wonder what sort of mental gymnastics they have had to go through to harmonize that ‘belief’ with recent events? Is God an asshole and just messing with them by telling them to run? Were they wrong and misheard his ‘voice’? Did his will change?

Somehow I suspect from the characteristics they displayed in their brief stay in the public eye that they aren’t the sort of persons who openly and honestly assess their own beliefs and make changes towards becoming better people. But I could be wrong: Only time will tell! Perhaps in the future, I will have to be more confident in the abilities of persons such as these once more evidence comes in–and I hope to be the sort of person who weighs it fairly–but so far: not a whole lot of good evidence to change my mind!

God Loves Australia!

From the Fresh Fire USA website

The Australian Tour is currently on hold until further Notice.  Australian Immigration has denied Todd entry into the country at this time.  We are however doing everything we can to get an answer for the denied entry.  We have sent all the required documents and are awaiting approval from Australian Immigration to be allowed to come to Australia and Minister.  Please continue to stand with us as we are not giving up.

Sure, the Bentley apologists will say that this is the ‘Enemy’ blocking his path. But we know the truth: God loves Australia, and in his compassion he decided to save them from the psycholical agony and spiritual abuse they would suffer at the hands of  Todd’s ‘ministry’.

Case in point:

 

Now if just every country in the world would follow suit…

James, Can You Sing Solo?

So low I can’t hear you!

This video was sent to me by Davo Hynds. I’m not sure if we should thank him or not.

Davo writes

Hey,

I love your blog, and comment on it from time to time. Anyways, knowing your sick, twisted pleasure for youtube videos that mix religion and mediocre or abysmal talent, I thought you really needed to see this.

And what did he feel I should see? Merely, one of the most terrible church performances ever, and introduced with a self-aggrandizing speech of ridiculous proportions once you hear the ‘singing’:

And just in case you thought this was a one-off, or that the people in the audience only had to be tortured by one song, or that maybe he was just having one bad performance because he started off key or something:

Most reasonable comment on Youtube that describes the experience of sitting through these two videos:

I feel like somebody took a 12 gauge shotgun shell, filled it with shards of glass, and shot it into my eardrums, then poured salt water into my ear, then screamed obscenities at me with a bull horn. That’s how I feel.

Oh, and I feel violated.

Yep, that about sums it up!

A Trip Down Bad-Memory Lane

This is the type of Christianity that I was often exposed to in my formative childhood years. Many times this was presented as ‘good’ Christianity and as ‘discernment’.

And that’s part of the reason I am the way I am!

Video via

The Man With the Golden Voice: One Year Later

Last year, like many people, I was intrigued by the story of Ted Williams, a man with an amazing radio voice who was living as a homeless person in Columbus.

ET features a story on him, one year later.

Video from The Daily What

Lying For Jesus: Cindy Jacobs

Now the lady is just getting ridiculous… “I’m doing the same miracles as Jesus!”

Yeah, sure you are Cindy. Sure you are.

Last week, Cindy Jacobs was at Chuck Pierce’s church in Texas “giving the word for 2012” where she related several other miracles that she has performed, much like how she once reversed a hysterectomy.

Speaking last week, Jacobs warned that while God had urged them to prepare for crisis, God will also provide them with all the provisions that they need and recounted, for example, the time that she, Chuck Pierce, and Dutch Sheets managed to feed three thousand people with just three loaves of bread and still have bread left over.

Gullibility Test: Is Todd Bentley Telling the Truth?

After a devastating report from Nightline exposing Bentley’s inability to prove that a single person was healed by his ministry and the revelation that Bentley was having an extramarital affair, he left to join Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries, where his “restoration” has been one of Joyner’s primary missions. He recently returned to organizing ‘healing’ meetings. Bentley frequently gloats that he speaks to Jesus and Angels in his dreams and has even said that the Holy Spirit has ordered himto kick a kick a woman in the face with his boot and to take a woman’s legs and “bang them up and down on the platform like a baseball bat.”

Today on Prophetic Perspectives, Joyner lauded Bentley for healing a man of cancer…by punching him in the sternum.

So much untruth it’s hard to know where to begin, but after months and years of  Todd’s ‘stories’–which have no correlation to any physical reality–one would have to be operating under an extreme confirmation bias and have a large excess of credulity to believe that he healed anyone of anything by punching them in their sternum.

So then, a good way to tell if you are naive, gullible, superstitious, and operating under very faulty categories for interpreting reality: when Todd was speaking you believed every word he said in the above video.

If this is you, and you just thought to yourself, “Damn! I must be super gullible! What can I do?” Don’t worry yourself too much. The kind of stupidity that Bentley is peddling in the video can be fixed pretty easily (though not always painlessly!).

How you ask?

Well if you would just send me a seed offering of five-hundred dollars then the Lord will multiply that step of faith into real knowledge! I will send you my five part series Knowing the Knowable, and we will partner to fight the stupidity of MorningStar Ministries.

Hallelujah! Amen!

Priest vs Priest: Bethlehem Broom Brawl!

Priests at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem brawl for baby Jesus.

The fighting is becoming an annual exchaging of the blows between Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests at the holiest of holy sites for the rival Christian sects. [video and pictures of 2008's brawl]

The Palestinian police intervened, and managed to bring an end to this year’s melee. Next year’s Priestamania: Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match!

A Very Brief History of the Modern Calendar

Why do we celebrate tomorrow as New Year’s? Because the calendar says so!

Oh and don’t worry about the Mayan calendar stuff: “It’s a bunch of bunk!”