As James 2:19 states, “Even the demons believe–and tremble.”
Who Do Ya Turn To? Dad, of Course!
One of my snowblower tires was flat, and I couldn’t get it to inflate. So what to do?
Take it to Dad, of course. Because he can fix anything. That’s what I did a couple nights ago.
Tonight, after practice, I called Dad.
“Wondering if we can stop by to get the tire, since they say snow’s coming tomorrow.”
“Or, you could look in your garage,” Dad said.
He had fixed the tire, then dropped by today and put it back on the snowblower. Ready to go.
That’s one awesome Dad. Which I’ve known for a long, long time.
My Generation Wearing Dentures
The Super Bowl halftime programmers have been real cautious since the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction in 2004. Since then, they’ve been booking the oldest rockers they can find, assuming them to be safe.
- 2005: Paul McCartney
- 2006: The Rolling Stones
- 2007: Prince (who was surprisingly good)
- 2008: Tom Petty
- 2009: Bruce Springsteen
- 2010: The Who
No young, skin-showing talent. Certainly no rappers.
I’m just wondering who they’ll find in the years ahead. Here are some suggestions:
- Three Dog Night? They’re still around. Used to be the biggest band in the world
- Alice Cooper?
- AC/DC?
- Chuck Berry? He’s still kicking. I could hear “Johnny B. Goode” and “Maybellene” again.
- Aerosmith? (They were there in 2001, with Britney, ‘N Sync, and Mary J. Blige)
Sometime, one of these rockers is gonna have a heart-attack right there at halftime, live before billions of people. In fact, it could be Pete Townsend.
Wikipedia, of course, has a complete list of Super Bowl halftime shows.
Salivating Over the iPad
I would really really like an iPad. And I really really can’t justify getting one. It doesn’t plug any hole in my life. Doesn’t do anything that I’m not doing in some other sufficient way.
In the “Tool? or Toy?” category, it would be a toy for me.
But Mark Cuban is excited about it: “You can book it right now that it will be the product that kids of this generation grow up with and look back on with affection just like we did with the first video games. Video games changed how we grew up. The IPad will change how kids grow up.”
Wow, that’s setting some high expectations.
Good Enough and Better in the Church
Gary Anderson, a retired Marine colonel, published advice for US troops doing relief work in Haiti. I posted excerpts from that article. But I left out this one.
Beware of mission creep. Your job is to try to get Haiti back to something approaching the way it was seconds before the quake struck. If the President wants you to do nation-building, he’ll let you know. Identify the things that only you as the American military can do and for how long you will need to do them….
Your best people are the ones who will get you into mission creep situations the fastest. Doctors and engineers always want to make things better, and in these kinds of operations, better is the enemy of good enough.
Think about that: Better is the enemy of good enough.
In our culture, we worship excellence. Don’t do anything halfway. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Go all-out. Give 110%. Don’t give God second-best. Blah blah blah.
But just to be contrarian, let’s think about “mission creep” in relation to the church.
We throw all kinds of money at church stuff, in pursuit of excellence. We hire professionals to run children’s ministries, because ordinary volunteers aren’t good enough. If your church has the money, you hire musicians, hire people to do pastoral care, hire janitors, hire multimedia people. We professionalize whenever we can, because they can do it “better.” We’d prefer not to settle for a “good enough” volunteer, no matter how thoroughly anointed by God. Some people in large churches thumb their noses at the way resource-sparse churches like Anchor must do things (I’ve seen and heard plenty of such comments first-hand).
Is the pursuit of quality an example of mission creep? I think it often is. Excellence, I believe, can be a church idol.
Likewise with buildings. I admire the Vineyard people who rent facilities rather than erect their own cathedrals. For them, a rented school is good enough. And, for some inexplicable reason, God still uses them. Instead of yoking to a multi-year mortgage, they can pour money into ministry and missions.
The purchase and development of physical properties can constitute mission creep. It’s not necessary. The churches of Jesus Christ can thrive without buildings.
Is political involvement mission creep? Does it go beyond the Great Commission? Lots of people feel it is. I don’t believe that MUST be the case, but that it’s pretty much the current situation in America. And yet, I don’t want to restrict what God calls people to do. God gives different people different agendas. It’s just that political action is so enticing, so distracting, to so many people.
And I must ask: how much of the stuff I do, for the Kingdom, is just mission creep? I’m a denominational Communications Director. Communication is important. The Apostle Paul used letters. Today we use newsletters and websites and email. But does a denominational Twitter feed really advance the Great Commission? How much effort should go into a United Brethren Facebook page? Where does “valuable communication” end and “mission creep” begin?
I can always do communication better. But when is good enough, good enough?
Books: Pop. 1280, The Transgressors
Jim Thompson, who wrote most of his books in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, prowled the sewers of the human soul. His heroes were low-lifes, his stories pretty much devoid of people you’d want to take home to Momma.
Stephen King wrote in his introduction to Thompson’s “Now and On Earth”:
Know what I admired the most? The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn’t know the meaning of the word stop…..His novels are terrifying cameos of smalltown hurt, hypocrisy, and desperation. They are urgent in their ugliness, triumphant in their tawdriness….
Someone has to examine the stool samples of society; someone has to describe those tumors from which more cultured people shy away. Jim Thompson was one of the few.
I’ve read six Jim Thompson books now. I recently finished two. Like most Thompson books, they are published under the Vintage Black Lizard imprint.
“Pop. 1280” (1964) is set in a Texas smalltown, and told first-person by the town’s sheriff, Nick Corey. Corey presents himself as a lazy, cowardly fool–which he is. But he’s also a manipulative psychotic killer who conveys absolutely no guilt or second thoughts about his sins, which he carries out in a somewhat carefree way.
This book is a first-cousin to Thompson’s most famous book, “The Killer Inside Me,” which also stars a murderous sheriff. Actually, “The Getaway” and “The Grifters” are probably better known, but only because they were made into pretty good movies. “The Getaway,” with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw, was actually a great movie (which ended just before the book got really really dark).
“Pop. 1280” moved along quickly, the writing somewhat sparse, lacking (in a good way) at lot of imagery and atmospherics. I highly recommend it. Nick Corey is utterly fascinating, and you can’t guess what he’s going to do next as he leads you along in his own words, having a gool ol’ time.
“The Transgressors” (1961) also stars a lawman, this time a sheriff’s deputy, who ends up on the wrong side of the law, sort of. Tom Lord is not a terrible guy, like Nick Corey, but not a White Hat cowboy either. This one’s set in Texas, too. Lord does what he needs to do to avoid a world of hurt. It’s a pretty good Thompson book, not a great one.
Obama Faces the Opposition, Pseudo British Style
Obama’s lengthy exchange with Republicans yesterday was pretty impressive. You may not agree with his answers, but you have to admit he’s got quite a grasp of the issues. He’s a smart guy, and has thought deeply about issues long before becoming President (as “The Audacity of Hope” shows). We need more of this kind of exchange. Need to get the Republicans engaged in governing (which the Dems in Congress seem to have no interest in doing).
The ability to pull off an exchange like happened yesterday is not a necessity in a President. Ronald Reagan couldn’t have done what Obama did yesterday, but he was most definitely a leader.
All things considered, I think Bill Clinton could have done it even better. He was as bright and obsessively immersed in issues as Obama, but not as…prickly? He would have turned on the famous Clinton charm, which Obama possesses in a smaller amount and which is usually hidden beneath his innate aloofness.
Creative Shopping
My marriage is backwards. I enjoy shopping, and Pam doesn’t particularly. But in most marriages, if the stereotype holds, it’s the husband who gets totally bored while the wife is taking her time perusing every aisle in the store. So for those men, here are some ways to pass the time. And come to think of it, Pam could try these, too.
- Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.
- Walk up to an employee and tell her in an official voice, “Code 3 in Menswear. Get on it right away.”
- Go to the Service Desk and try to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway.
- Move a “CAUTION – WET FLOOR” sign to a carpeted area.
- Set up a tent in the camping department and invite the children shoppers to join you if they bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department.
- Place boxes of condoms in other people’s carts when they aren’t looking.
- When a clerk asks if he can help you, begin crying, “Why can’t you people just leave me alone?”
- Look right into the security camera and use it as a mirror while picking your nose.
- While handling guns in the hunting department, ask the clerk where you can find the anti-depressants.
- Dart around the store suspiciously while loudly humming the “Mission Impossible” theme.
- In the auto department, practice the Madonna look using different sizes of funnels.
- Hide in a clothing rack and when people browse through, yell, “Pick me! Pick me!”
- When an announcement comes over the loud speaker, assume a fetal position and scream, “Oh no! It’s those voices again!”
- Go into a fitting room, shut the door, wait awhile, then yelled very loudly, “Hey! There’s no toilet paper in here!”
Peggy Noonan on the SOTU
Peggy Noonan critiqued the State of the Union Address in her Wall Street Journal column. Of Obama’s words regarding healthcare, she concluded:
The battle over the president’s health-care plan is over, and the plan
will not be imposed on the country. Waxing boring on the virtues of the
bill was a rhetorical way to obscure the fact that it is dead….The bill will
now get lost in the mists and disappear. It is a collapsed soufflé in
an unused kitchen in the back of an empty house. Now and then the
president will speak of it to rouse his base and remind them of his
efforts.
She ended with some quotes from a man whom she describes as “a friendly acquaintance of the president, a Republican who bears him no animus.” Here’s the final paragraph.
“I hope we have big changes in 2010,” the friend said. Only significant
loss will force the president to focus on spending. “To heal our
country we need to get the arrogance out of the White House and the
elitists out of the Congress. We need tough love. We need a real adult
in the White House because we don’t have adults in the Congress.”
Cold Professional Contempt
Col. Stuart Herrington ran secret interrogation centers for the military from the Vietnam War through the early 1990s. He gave a speech about interrogation techniques, which Thomas Ricks mentions on his blog, The Best Defense.
Says Ricks, “One of the most striking aspects of his talk is the cold professional contempt he has for Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who not only encouraged a brutal approach, but were amateurish in doing so.”
Herrington said, “There was no room on our team for charlatans who believed in sleep deprivation, inducing hypothermia, stress positions, face slapping, forced nudity, water boarding, blaring heavy metal music, or other amateurish, ineffective and ethically flawed tricks.”
It’s a very interesting post. I suspect Herrington was as sickened as I was at reading “The Dark Side,” a superb piece of reporting about our descent torture, which will be remembered for decades as an American low-point.
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