2024-01-29T18:15:12+00:00

That Book

January 29, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I wrote a book called Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Other Books Nobody Reads. It’s a terrific title, and I really love the whole thing. It’s not perfect, by any means. It’s a little unfriendly, there isn’t a Table of Contents and there aren’t page numbers. It’s a book of essays, so there’s no arc, and it follows no real discernible path. It’s equal parts memoir, the story of our faith community, The Bridge, and Bible commentary. It includes a number of blog posts from the Bridge site (and not this one), and a fiction piece called “Bands We Don’t Even Like.”

At the end of every service, we stand and hold hands for closing prayer, and we do that (in part) because of 2 songs: “Dance, Dance, Christa Paffgen,” by Anberlin, and “Rumors Of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” by Rise Against. I explain why in the book, and I also break down the bible verse that most informs my every day (Genesis 28:16 “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was unaware.”)

Incidentally, the Anberlin line is “if a touch is worth 1,000 words, then a touch is worth them all.” And I just now read an online lyric page that reads, “…then YOUR touch is worth them all.” If that is, indeed, what it says, I’m going to continue to pretend it doesn’t, and still says “…A touch is worth them all.”

The reason for the Rise Against song is, “Let’s take this one day at a time, I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine.” I can’t play this one in church because there are language issues, and I don’t play the Anberlin because it’s over 7 minutes long.

I’ve been dying to play a Morrissey song, and “Death Of A Disco Dancer” fit perfectly last Sunday, but that song is long, as well, so I just read the lyrics.

I love the book because it was my first, and it was my heart spilled onto the pages. Of course it’s not perfect, how could it be? It’s messy and feels urgent, like I had to get it out immediately or I’d never sleep again. It’s sweat, blood, joy, exhaustion, tears, confusion, frustration, brokenness and gratitude.

I didn’t think I’d write another one – I love the blog format. The sermon is such a cool art form because it’s also immediate, but electric and personal, human, flowing, physical, thoughtful, life-changing (for the giver as well as anyone who hears.) Blogs feel very similar. I’m writing this now and you can read it within 5 minutes. Books are different. I began this 2nd one a few years ago, put my head down and worked like crazy for most of last year, and finally finished it in October. The first people read a physical copy a few days before Christmas, and it won’t be approved by Amazon to sell there until late spring (hopefully). I self-publish for the same reason everybody else does, because it gets out fast and is relatively easy.

I started the process to put a little commerce store on this lovewithacapitall.com site to sell it, but it requires an upgrade, and I don’t feel like that now. As I write that last sentence, it feels silly. If I want the new book in the world, an upgrade is a small price to pay. We’ll see. It’s for sale now on Lulu.com, and it’s called Be Very Careful Who You Marry. It’s much friendlier, one subject (marriage), chapters, a Table of Contents, and even page numbers!!! I’ll tell you about it next time.

I am going to go back and clean up the last one, …Books Nobody Reads, and get that out again for summer or fall. Maybe you’ll love it like I do, but making anything is an interesting dance. Obviously, I’d love everyone to love everything, for this to be the biggest blog in the world, and for people to find tons of value in it, but the truth is, we are made to create. It’s an offering, isn’t it? We listen, live, process, and then we express it, however we express it. Maybe it’ll connect – after all, we’re all having these beautiful, and beautifully unique, intensely personal yet strangely universal, human experiences. And maybe it won’t. But it has to get out, we have to open our hearts and hands.

I tell you all of this to encourage & celebrate the impulse to build, to construct bridges between us, however we do. You either know you’re an artist, or you don’t – but you certainly are one. Let’s do this, I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine, and we’ll jump together.

Who I Am.

January 22, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There are a few works (Barbie, Echo, Strange World) I’d like to discuss. Well, sort of. The site asked me my first name and what it means in the prompt. It’s Charles, but I have gone by Chad forever. Don’t ask me how you get Chad from Charles, I’m not sure that’s a usual shortening, but if it matters that much, you’d have to ask my mom. It was her decision. Why does the site care? Why would it prompt me with that?

I think the site believes that we can learn a bit more about each other, if we explore the meanings and etymology of our names. It’s wrong, of course. What does Charles, or Chad, say about me, who I actually am? Chuck Klosterman, in his book Fargo Rock City, says any review says almost nothing about the actual whatever (film, album, etc) being reviewed, and everything about the one doing the reviewing. If that’s the case – and it is – then you already know who I am, in the most significant way. Much more than if you knew my given first name is Charles or that I’m a Junior.

Barbie is both dumber and smarter than I expected. It’s purposefully cheesy and embarrassing, in parts, and deep and nuanced, in others. It’s really a fascinating film, perfectly cast and surprisingly well written. The characters are plastic, but developed as flash and blood, with lots of authentic facets of the human experience. I loved it and my mom hated it, which is one of the best compliments I can give. Nobody hates vanilla ice cream. It’s nobody’s favorite, but nobody thinks it’s gross, either. We all like it. Morrissey is my favorite singer, and my brother cringes at the sound of his voice. You can’t really love something without edges. The things that truly matter are, on some beautiful level, polarizing. Barbie is.

Echo is one of the best Marvel series on Disney+. Echo is a deaf Native American woman named Maya, the show is culturally wonderful and very violent. The most important sections of Black Panther were the music and practices of Wakandan culture. This is why the Tolerance Crew’s virtue of “colorblindness” is so dumb. Why would we all ever want to be the same???? My ancestry doesn’t have powwows or quinceaneras, and that’s too bad. But I have other things. I don’t want to lose my traditions and I certainly don’t want to eliminate theirs. I want us all to live in the most vibrant, colorful world as possible, where we are not simply tolerated (which is an offensively low bar to aspire to) but appreciated and loved. Echo was great.

Strange World was totally average, with amazing graphics.

I wonder what these last 3 paragraphs say about me. Probably you know that, as a target demographic, I am very easy to please. I want to like everything, so when I don’t, it’s depressing to me. Maybe when I don’t, it’s because I’ve just had an argument with the Angel, or my stomach hurts, or I’m preoccupied with the drama of friends and family. Books are a little exempt from this, because they take much longer to consume.

I’m reading one now, called As Good As Dead, by Elizabeth Evans, that has an act of unfaithfulness as it’s inciting event. I don’t know if I’ll finish it, even though Elizabeth Evans is awesome. That kind of betrayal hurts my soul and my soul is damaged enough simply living an engaged life in the world. Enough real life unfaithfulness exists to suffer. Maybe I don’t need the nauseous response of a fictional anxiety.

Yes, that last paragraph reveals much more of who I am than the 4 letters of my name ever could. Listening to There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is more important to me and who I am than a German lineage.

The first thing I wanted to know when I began talking to a prospective romantic interest is what sorts of cds she owned, not her middle name. (Incidentally, the Angel’s collection was awful, but she’s so jarringly gorgeous, exceptions were made.) I don’t care as much, now that I’m not a teenager, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care at all. Or that it’s irrelevant.

The honest truth is that it matters if you like Pulp Fiction, and why or why not, and it will always paint a more accurate self-portrait than any of us will admit.

Pierced

December 20, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This is not a post on the site prompt, youth sports or the woeful state of high school officiating. I have no shortage of material on those things, I’m just a little tired of typing the word referee.

Snowpiercer is a film starring Captain America, about an environmental catastrophe that kills all living things, except those lucky (?) enough to board a train that endlessly circles the globe. It sounds like a thin premise on which to base a movie or a tv series, much better suited to a novel, but it was excellent. (I am about to ruin the end. When do spoiler ethics expire? Surely 10 years is enough, isn’t it?)

At the end, Captain America fights Ed Harris and 2 others, believing the earth had slightly warmed and could now support life, set off a bomb that crashes the train. 2 people, both “train babies” (humans born on the train, never having set foot outside or breathed fresh air), one 16ish and one 8ish, ostensibly the only survivors of the crash, walk away through the snow, where they/we see a polar bear in the distance.

My very great friend saw this as an allegory on the death of the human race. The polar bear would surely eat them. As a matter of fact, being so naive and uneducated on dangerous predators, she reasoned they would likely serve themselves up trying to pet it’s soft white fur. The animals might survive and repopulate, without the destructive influence of you & me, and the earth would quietly, beautifully heal.

I hadn’t even considered this conclusion. As they walked, hand in hand, together into a brand new world, I found it unbelievably hopeful. Everything was possible, as a 2nd Adam & Eve, they could also survive and repopulate, free of their ancestors’ destructive influence, and the earth (including a new lineage of kind, innocent-ish people), would quietly, beautifully heal.

She’s right, of course. They are destined to be food. She’s super smart and hilarious, you’d love her like I do immediately.

But I don’t care about right and wrong, in this context. I don’t care about realism or food chains and predator/prey relationships. When the credits rolled, all I saw was a beginning, our beginning. Not an end. We are new and can build whatever we want, a New Creation with no ties at all to “how it’s always been.” Just because it was, doesn’t mean it is now.

It’s a pretty good illustration. The philosophy we can choose is one of hope and faith in God (that He is still here and hasn’t abandoned His creation), in us, in our divine design, that we can still remember who we are and what we’ve been called into. That, even with thousands of years to the contrary, we can live lives of love and peace instead of indifference, -isms, and war. All we have to do is blow up the old paradigm and have the courage to walk away from that garbage.

Have a fantastic Christmas, everybody.

Current Favorite

November 28, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Yesterday’s site prompt was, Who are your current most favorite people? It’s an strange question, feeling clunky and slightly unsettling. Most Favorite People should surely be capitalized, as if a title or award that is bestowed on the deserving. However, the inclusion of the word “current” implies that this title can also be rescinded. What is earned can be taken away.

Current MFPs are Chris Evans and Bong Joon-ho, star and director of the dystopian nightmare (yet still hopeful) Snowpiercer movie. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who is expecting a baby with his girlfriend Sarah Jane Ramos, is, too. Why do I know who his girlfriend is? Or especially that they are pregnant? Is this really important for us to know? I’m not certain that all lines between public and private should be erased, but that’s a little strange for me to say as I sit in my living room chair writing a blog where I share all of the personal, sometimes intimate, details of my life with you. But I get to choose what is shared. Maybe Dak Prescott or Ms. Ramos issued a press release, but very often the breaking information/news is clearly not for me. The social contract of fame, whether I like it or not, has a very high cost.

What is unsettling to me about this question is the conditionality of it all. If Snowpiercer was terrible, would Joon-ho make this list? I wasted an hour of a Netflix movie, 6 Underground, before I had to turn it off with extreme judgment, and that director isn’t an MFP. Dak has been awesome lately, but the next time he throws 4 interceptions, or loses another playoff game, will he, his girlfriend, and his baby still be Most Favorites?

Nev Schulman, Max Joseph, and Kamie Crawford – hosts of Catfish – are perpetual MFPs. That sounds right. If they are truly our Favorites, they should remain favorites, right? Not all episodes of Catfish are great. In fact, most new episodes aren’t.

Morrissey is the best example of this contrast. He often says regrettable, problematic things, not every song is an A+ anymore, some solo albums are admittedly average, but he will stay my #1 MFP forever.

I’m so far considering celebrities or famous artists I’ve never met, but the temptation to carry this idea of currency is insidious, infiltrating our actual relationships and lives. We commit to our spouses, children and friends with the same level of faithfulness as our quarterbacks, and directors. If we don’t feel it right now, we move on, they were a current love, but that’s over and we’re down the road onto the next “current.”

Fidelity means “the quality or state of being faithful or loyal,” and maybe the term hi-fi shouldn’t apply only to our stereos. Maybe we should be hi-fi. Currency is fine for singers and sports teams, but not families and communities. I wonder how everything would change overnight if the impulse to disconnect, leave and find a new current based on this moment alone, were left behind. If our MFPs were never again current, and just remained the favorites they are now. Maybe we could just give our love, based not on performance, covering over the metaphorical interceptions and 6 Undergrounds. Maybe we could begin to choose hi-fi over why-fi, and just see what we could build.

Cover Songs

November 8, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Earlier this week, a cover of “Killing In The Name,” came across my “You Might Like” playlist. I have been very open with my acceptance of the fact that Amazon absolutely knows what I might like. I’ve even embraced the omnipotence of The Machines, if it means I get new songs by new bands on a regular basis.

“Killing In The Name” is a Rage Against The Machine song, from their first eponymous album, and it is perfect. Everything about it is perfect. Rage Against The Machine was awesome, especially for a 17 year-old boy who was socially frustrated and angry (like me).

The cover version is from something called Sueco, and it’s a shot for shot remake, like that equally superfluous Gus Van Sant Psycho remake. The problem with this sort of cover of this sort of song is that the decision to make it a carbon copy (with the only difference being the people playing it) is a guarantee that it will be worse in every way. For example, whoever sings for Sueco (maybe Sueco is his name?) is decisively NOT Zack de la Rocha. Instead, he’s a sad substitute. When I tried to look this up, I discovered that Machine Gun Kelly made the same mistake in 2020. It’s also faithful, which also just makes it worse.

If “Killing In The Name” (or any Rage song, really) is going to be covered, the artist has to be wildly different, like Tori Amos or Sarah McLachlan. That would be interesting, right? New, different aspects would be emphasized, words we missed before might be noticed, it could reach an entirely new audience. And that is the point of a cover song.

What does Sueco or Machine Gun Kelly’s version add to the world? Literally no one would listen to theirs when the perfect Rage original is available. Why would they? (Maybe Sueco’s mom would, but moms are like that, it’s like a beautifully pure form of maternal insanity.)

I care for lots of reasons. First, because I care about music and art and I care about what it says about us, individually and as a culture.

And the second is because it makes me think of the Bible. The Great Commission of Jesus is that we spread the Gospel. This Gospel never changes, but the way we present it does, based on who we are, our personalities, the things we like, and gifts & talents we have received. And as we are different, our audience is, too. We’re like walking, talking, loving cover songs, playing the original (in this case, the Gospel) authentically, from our own unique design.

What if we try to play our version by trying to sound just like somebody else’s? What if we are Sueco, playing a Rage classic, while bringing nothing that is strictly Sueco’s. It’s simply unnecessary, which makes it offensive, if you happen to care about our individual creative sparks, which I do, very much.

Maybe Sueco is terrific? Who will ever know, as long as they are trying to play somebody else’s songs, just like that somebody else? Maybe they should cover “Love Is A Battlefield” instead, but this time like Sueco, not like Pat Benatar. I’m assuming Sueco is a hard rock band, but what do I know? They could sound more like James Taylor on their originals. Now I’m assuming they have originals. The point is, they have been given something that we will never experience as long as they’re trying to be someone else.

And as far as the Bible, I can reach certain types, but I can’t reach some people that you can, or that my sister can, or that my neighbors can. But they need to be reached, so now what? How about if we all stop trying so hard to be someone else, doing what someone else is doing, the way they’re doing it, and start doing it the way we do? We’re the only ones who can – you’re the only one who can play it like you, who can love like you. And if you don’t do it like you, not only are you making pointless Sueco covers that no one will hear, but you’re not making your own songs. And we desperately need your songs, our story can’t ever be completely told without them.

One Thing

November 2, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The prompt today is “One Thing I Think Everyone Should Know,” and I’ll get there in a minute.

First, last night I watched this documentary on Max called “Last Stop Larrimah,” about a missing (likely murdered) man in Larrimah, Australia. Larrimah had 11 residents, now it has 10, and no one knows who did it or why. Anyone could have done it, all 11 simultaneously liked and hated each other. But the review I sort of read referenced the often blurry line between telling a story and making fun of the subjects. The Larrimanians, well, they live in a town of 11 in Australia, so they’re quirky and odd. They are not like the people we see at the Whole Foods or high school basketball games.

I finished Birdman this morning, which plays like a documentary of the making of a Broadway play. It isn’t a doc, it’s fiction, and it won an Oscar several years ago. Birdman sounds/looks exactly like a movie I would LOOOOVE, except that it wasn’t. I didn’t like it at all. The performances were outstanding, especially Edward Norton’s, but left me standing in my living room, wondering why I felt nothing at all but sad. The story was, more or less, about the artifice of the industry – the only things that were real was the insecurity and desperate need for validation. Maybe they were on the other side of that same line, maybe they were making fun of their subjects, too. Maybe it was intentional.

An awful lot of things, on film and IRL, walk that line. We all carry that insecurity & desperation, we all have our quirks and personalities. As we walk around, feeling the friction of others who are nothing like us (or who are too much like us), how do we respond? Are our emotions and judgments celebration of another’s unique strangeness or are we laughing at the labels we place on them, labels that obscure their hearts but emphasize everything else.

I liked Last Stop Larrimah, and didn’t like Birdman, for pretty much the same reason: I really love people. This isn’t always an easy position to take, there is always violence and evil. There is never a shortage of examples of inhumanity. But in the face of the never ending avalanche of mistreatment and de-valuation, we simply have to persevere. Otherwise, those examples will continue, ad infinitum.

Birdman didn’t like it’s characters, and thats ok, I suppose. They didn’t, either. This tension between who they were and who they thought they should be or who they were trying to prove they were drove every plot point. Their self-loathing motivated every twist and turn. And I can’t help but think the critic who viewed Larrimah through the lens of ‘otherness is less, which makes it a punchline’ felt the same. He (or she) wanted them to be like us, cool and oh-so sophisticated, with the same hopes, dreams, decor and jeans. Wanted them saddled with the same self-loathing – and when they didn’t wear that on the outside, he branded them with it.

So, what do I want everyone to know? That we are amazing and wonderful. That we don’t have to be any of the should’s, that we don’t have anything to prove, that we don’t have to live like that for another second. That differences are just the best. That there’s nothing to make fun of, there’s nothing to mock. That we are who we are, and that is so much more than good enough. That’s what I want everyone to know.

saviors

October 19, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

Yesterday I finished the 3 episode Savior Complex documentary on what used to be HBO, then HBO Max, now just Max. As far as documentaries go, it was pretty perfect. I think we could discuss it for days and days. That is probably the best compliment I could give to the art form.

As I write the word “discuss,” I am fully aware that discussion isn’t what we do too well in our current cultural environment. Discuss implies discourse, listening, careful consideration, and a respectful give and take of ideas and perspectives. None of that is in vogue. Outrage is. None of the earlier words apply to outrage: listening, careful, consideration, give-and-take, and certainly not respect. The most glaring lack in outrage is empathy.

Outrage finds it’s deepest roots in selfish myopia.

Political outrage requires an aggressive inability to see another’s perspective. The other side has to be full of ignorant, heartless, brainless monsters. Once it isn’t, once it’s full of moms and dads, friends and fellow Dallas Cowboy fans, who might also be educated and kind, but just happen to arrive at different conclusions, things get very complicated.

All of the intricacies and nuance are impossible to detail here, especially because the facts of the specific case aren’t our subject at all. Renee Bach and Serving His Children (her Christian mission organization) did great work, and saved many malnourished children. This is true. Renee Bach and Serving His Children used questionable tactics, which probably resulted in the deaths of other malnourished children. This is also true. There is terrific conversation to be had about the purpose of the No White Saviors action group. There is also terrific conversation to be had about those who operate No White Saviors, and if that purpose has been obscured by vanity and outrage.

I don’t know the truth. Knowing would mean that I could see hearts and motivation, which I obviously cannot. I know people do beautiful things that go spectacularly wrong and result in pain. I know that because it has happened to me. Many times, I thought I was doing the right thing, and people were wounded, given scars that could last a lifetime. I still can’t say if those things were the right things. The simple fact of negative consequence doesn’t automatically mean that they weren’t. Were the lives saved enough to sufficiently outweigh the deaths? Is 1 death too many to ever redeem the positive impact?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’m not outraged by anyone’s actions. I might disagree, or hold different opinions, but I understand them. I heard both sides in the documentary and I can truly understand why they might have done what they did. (Maybe it wasn’t actually why they did them, but I simply can’t ever state with absolute certainty what their why was. Maybe they can’t, either.)

Outrage is not passion. Passion can drive a tremendous amount of change that reinforces our shared humanity. Passion, or conviction, rooted in love tirelessly fights injustice and seeks to end all of the -isms that plague our species. Outrage drives Facebook clicks and paychecks through the promulgation of fear. And fear isn’t love.

There aren’t easy answers, nor are there easy questions. Empathy isn’t easy. But if we’re ever going to end the division that is killing us all, we have to try. Easy got us here, it won’t get us out.

Artists

October 10, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Who are my favorite artists? That’s what the site wants to know today, and I have lots and lots of answers.

I recognize the idea is to lists singers, writers, painters, filmmakers, right? Morrissey & Rodin, Roth & Tarantino. There would have been a time that I would have jumped at the opportunity to make a list and explain (in great detail) why for each. Actually, I would still love, and may, in fact, do just that.

But I’ll start this list, not with Morrissey, but with my sister, who spent last week seeing U2 play at that new ball in Las Vegas, then Cirque du Soleil then next night, then visiting Red Rocks the next. I have a picture where she was, apparently, flying. In another one she was doing handstands on sand – I get those a lot. She’s a yoga master, and like all yogis, she yogas everywhere. She is now in her 50’s and has figured things out, to where her life is wild, imaginative and blindingly vibrant.

Next are my neighbors, who are teachers and young parents. Their daughter is a fireball of talent, which is fairly predictable, because her parents are overflowing with abilities, like musical superheroes. They’re also kind and funny, and last month brought home materials and built a deck onto their home. I guess their superhero-ism isn’t only musical.

You see, I think the greatest works of art are not albums or films, but our lives. We’ve all been created with limitless creativity and possibility, and when we can spot it, it’s exciting and hopeful. We are all inspired to do the same. It’s like invitations into our own lives, where we are free to run as fast as we can (whatever that means, whatever “running” is for any of us.)

The last one in this list is the one I’m most familiar with: The Angel. As the walls of her employer crumble, she is graceful and more and more stunning every moment, even as some of her dark hair is replaced with gray. Everybody with sense is abandoning that ship, yet she stays, she says “to care for her people.” Her people are, of course, all people. Now, completely superficially, she’s the most beautiful woman I know. I sometimes have to be careful on Sundays, I can easily lose my train of thought when I see her. But in a surprising twist, she’s way better inside, and I can think of no better compliment than that.

These artists, and their creations, aren’t perfect – it’s no accident that 2 of them are 2 of the people I know the deepest, and have had the biggest arguments with – but great art never is. We love Kurt Cobain and Against Me, we connect with them in ways we never could with Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. The latter are sterile and produced, and the former are authentic and messy. Notes are missed, we might not understand the words, they’re flawed, with sharp edges. We love them. This is art, it’s the expression of the soul, not necessarily technical prowess, but humanity and, in that, intimate connection.

My favorite artists are Jetpack WordPress bloggers, self-publishers, youth sports coaches, RNs & CNAs, realtors, landscapers, therapists, teachers, secretaries – There’s no end to this list, I really could go on and on. I picked 4 to name here because…well…there isn’t a why. Part of my artistic call and talent is to point out awesome wherever I find it. There are constraints to this format, but there are no constraints to my life. And if every moment I can recognize and appreciate the countless artists I see, if every moment I can love another person and their art, then my life will be a masterpiece, too.

The Machines, pt 2

October 5, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt today is asking what my life would look like without a computer, and I couldn’t care any less about that. That bell has been rung, that box has been opened and burned and there is no stuffing technology into a new one. In addition, everything I’ve done today has included a computer.

The alarm on the Angel’s phone woke us up. Then I went to the gym, where I checked in via the Planet Fitness app, catalogued my workout on a Notes app, while I listened to The Baller Lifestyle podcast on Google Podcasts. Afterwards, I watched tv while I ate my breakfast, then completed a Title IX training online (required for my job at the school.) Now, I am listening to a “You Might Like” AI-generated playlist on Amazon Music while writing Jetpack blog posts on my iPad.

Feeding the animals in this house, brushing my teeth, and eating breakfast are the only things I’ve done that didn’t employ a computer. We won’t even get into the systems included to manufacture, market, and sell the pet food, person food, and tooth paste into my hands and mouth. I wonder if there is anything unrelated to our machines.

I also wonder how I feel about that.

There was a time where I would have identified as Luddite, opposing any and all forms of so-called “progress.” Maybe I would have been one of the revolutionaries destroying machines, attempting to destroy industry in the early 1800’s. (I suppose it’s still there a little – I did say “so-called” and put quotation marks around the word progress.)

I guess The Machines will kill us all – or keep us alive to be used as batteries for their cold future, but until then, I’m not sure I mind their existence too much. For just 1, we know each other only because of the new lines that connect us. For another, this AI knows me and my musical tastes better than I do. The Baller Lifestyle podcast has 2 hosts, 1 in New Jersey & 1 in California, and has given me more pleasure than I can possibly express.

They have created The New Religion, as they’ve made the old ones easier to adhere to. But which one are we following? At which altar are we worshiping? Is it the Christian church we livestream from across town, or the country? Or is it the screen we’re staring at? Is it our Bibles and Qurans, or the presses that print them?

I once heard the story of David and Goliath was actually a story of the conflict of infringing technology. Goliath had all of the newest armor and weapons, David had a slingshot and stones. We read how that went, but despite losing that battle, has Goliath won the war? Who knows?

When we download our “free” apps, it’s important to know the glaring fact that, without a product to buy, we are the products being bought and sold. And that’s ok. These free apps in the Meta-verse are great, we simply have to have our eyes wide open. When we use any social media, we are being manipulated, and probably the problem is when we can no longer recognize that manipulation. When we think the Facebook feeds we receive are the actual news instead of carefully curated tools to increase our time and clicks, that’s when The Machines (and their shady developers) win. Right?

If we are blind and passive, the New Religion becomes our religion. I don’t know what progress is, but I do know where we’re heading: wherever we choose. Either we choose love and kindness and beautiful connection or we choose to not choose, blissfully asleep, we become the blobs on the BNL spaceship in Wall-E.

Now that I reconsider, maybe I was wrong earlier, maybe I could care less.

What Is Truth?

September 26, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The title of this post is a very famous question asked of Jesus Christ by the Roman governor Pilate. He didn’t mean it as an actual question, he wasn’t asking. It was more of a rhetorical comment on the relativity of truth, if it even exists at all. If truth is a sliding scale, then it is simply based on the whims or preferences of the population, and of little to no use at all.

A few weeks ago, I watched a Netflix documentary called Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press. It purported to be about the legal battle between a website called Gawker and Hulk Hogan. It seems the Hulkster had made a video of himself having sex with his buddy’s wife, and somehow, Gawker got the tape and made it public. Is this the kind of thing that qualifies as news? Is this what people want to see? Before we are very quick to answer, we should replace “Hulk Hogan” with “Kim Kardashian” or “Paris Hilton” or “Pamela Anderson.” Of course we don’t want to see Hulk Hogan’s sex tape, but apparently, we do have an insatiable appetite for the sex tapes of young women, and we really don’t care too much how they are procured.

I say purported because the doc was actually about the person that funded the Hukster’s lawsuit, which he won, and another case of very very wealthy people attacking a media outlet that published a story that was quite unflattering. It was about news and truth and the effect of money on those 2 things.

The other documentary I watched was Eat The Rich, about the GameStop stock market manipulation. It was great – you should watch that one – but in it, a stock broker simplified the entire situation: He said (and I’m paraphrasing), if a company is healthy and well run, it’s stock price will go up. If i’s not, it won’t. That’s how the stock market works (or is supposed to work – there are lots of factors that can tamper with that purity, as you can imagine). The GameStop event represented the absolute divorce of stock price from the actual business. What was true didn’t matter at all.

These 2 documentaries had almost nothing in common except a Pilate-eque perspective of the truth, namely, that there isn’t any. You just get to choose what is true. I hesitate to say our culture, because it appears that it is every culture, for as long as human beings have been walking on this earth, that wants to ground truth in our own experience and opinion. Instead of The Truth, it’s ‘the truth’ or ‘my truth.’

When you see a news story, do you believe it? Does it matter if it’s on Fox News, Facebook or CNN? When you see statistics about COVID or the pros/cons of masking, do you trust what you read, or is it “fake news?” Our relationship with the truth has always been tenuous, but now it seems nonexistent, and there’s no way that can be a good thing. If nothing is real, nothing is sunk into stone, then how do we ever find the comfort that comes from consistency? There simply can’t be consistency when facts are a matter of perspective and objectivity is a myth. No wonder we all have such anxiety.

Who knows? Maybe there isn’t any Truth, maybe there never was, but I’m pretty sure none of us believe that. Instead, maybe there has always been Truth, maybe it’s always been the same Truth, and maybe we need to hold onto it a little tighter.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: culture