It Is What It Is

A few weeks ago I told Kelly that "it is what it is" will be the new catchphrase of 2007. I just heard someone on ESPN say it again, as it seems that it's the only phrase athletes and coaches are willing to offer nowadays. Apparently, I'm a few years too late as USA Today declared the phrase the cliche of 2004. Al Gore even used it publicly in 2002 when reflected on his failed Presidential bid. Maybe I haven't been paying attention. But I've started hearing it lately beyond the sporting world. "It Is What It Is" is ready to take over the world.

And, honestly, I've been trying it out myself lately. It's kinda fun.

Sample conversation:

Old Lady: "Mister, you just ran over my cat, got out of your car, kicked it a few times, got back into your car, and peeled out over its carcass!!!"

Steve: "It is what it is, Ma'am."

My advice: try it, Mikey. You'll like it.

Am I A Grup?

Caught an article from USA Today . . . today . . . about the next generation of fathers. It discusses the need for "hipster" dads to try to remain cool despite transitioning into the fatherhood role. Some are referring to them as "grups." What exactly is a grup? This definition from the New York Magazine:

"Also known as yupster [yuppie + hipster], yindie [yuppie + indie], and alterna-yuppie. Our preferred term, grup, is taken from an episode of Star Trek [keep reading] in which Captain Kirk et al. land on a planet of children who rule the world, with no adults in sight. The kids call Kirk and the crew “grups,” which they eventually figure out is a contraction of “grown-ups.” It turns out that all the grown-ups had died from a virus that greatly slows the aging process and kills anybody who grows up.

So, yeah, I think it's an insult. The point is, it's supposed to describe dads who don't want to let fatherhood be the fast track to dorkville.

Let me try and break this down. Where did grups come from?

I believe it's the inevitable result of American parental evolution. Our parents, the Baby Boomers, had parents that were products of a couple World Wars and The Depression; they were more concerned about survival than staying hip [was "hip" even a term then?]. So when the Boomers had kids, they swore they'd one up their parents in the coolness area, holding on for dear life. How else do you think the Rolling Stones and the Eagles were able to do so many farewell tours. By the time you get to us, the MTV generation, we've evolved into the hipsters.

So the question that currently haunts me: am I a grup?

I'm not quite sure.

Disqualifying me would be that I've never owned Doc Martins, a Volkswagen Jetta, or Death Cab For Cutie CD. Yet I do have a fear of becoming irrelevant. Not quite sure where that phobia came from but I never want to be the guy wearing acid-wash jeans and sporting a mullet while jamming to Foreigner [unless that becomes fashionable again, then I might be game]. Because of this I try to keep up on my pop-culture. I listen to new music, read Entertainment Weekly, and stay up to date on new trends via the interwebs. Heck, we live among uber-hip urbanites, so there's some grup street cred.

Admission: I do watch VH1, but it's not as lame as it used be . . . unless I've finally crossed over and become the lame kind of person who watches VH1. Suck.

But the reality is, I'm not obsessed with staying cool. Don't get me wrong: I'm not going to mail it in yet, but I have higher priorities. More than working my gruppiness, I care about being a good husband and father. I'll admit this: I'll keep making a minor effort to stay cool, but I would never do it at my family's expense.

Ain't grup enough for that.

It's Getting Hot In HERRRRRRE!

Let me follow up on yesterday's post concerning the Doomsday Clock. One of the main reasons these scientists think we're closer to the end of the world is the deteriorating state of the global environment. You have to be hiding under a rock not to know that our world is in grave danger because of all the evil we humans have inflicted upon it, from our aerosol hairspray to our burning piles of freon tanks. Unless we get our act together our children won't have much of a future, forced to wear gas masks while dog-paddling in a Waterworld all while enduring 100 degree temperatures in the dead of winter.

But all this begs the question: is global warming even real?

While there is a scientific base attached to global warming theories, we must admit that they are subjective interpretations of facts. Interesting enough, major media sources relate these opinions as unquestionable truth. But why would educated people perpetuate these theories if they weren't 100% true? Always look towards the lowest common denominator:

Money.

There's big money to be had by people willing to do research about global warming. Eccentric billionaire Richard Branson donated $3 billion dollars to help solve the global warming problem. For that kind of money you wouldn't want to admit that there wasn't a problem.

So back to the original question. Can we freely question global warming?

Not in public. Doing so in today's political climate will earn you the label of ignoramus. Some, such as CBS reporter Scott Pelley, would compare you to a Holocaust denier. This article tells about some Weather Channel climatologist who suggests that any TV meteorologist who denies global warming should be stripped of their certification. There are scientists who believe that global warming is a crock, but they lose major street cred for stepping out and saying it; additionally, if employed by a university, a researcher could lose research funding or tenure for stating their opinion.

My Christian worldview allows me a different perspective. The world was created by God to be used by human beings. We needn't worship this terra firma because it wasn't designed to last forever. Still, we're called to be good stewards of all God entrusted to us. I won't go around burning rain forests for yuks. But neither will I accept widespread persecution because I don't buy that the environment is the most pressing issue we face in this country.

Using only a half a century of reliable statistics to make concrete statements concerning a planet that is millions of years old [their take] isn't responsible, nor very scientific. So I ask politely: back off. To each his own.

I heard a rumor that Al Gore might be coming to town to give his Inconvenient Truth power point presentation. Maybe he can clear this up for all of us.

Time Is Drawing Near

The Doomsday Clock moved forward two minutes this morning. I think I speak for everyone when I ask, "Who gives a ****?"

Apparently the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist came up with this Doomsday Clock after World War 2 in order to show how close we were to the end of the world. The clock has moved nineteen times in the past sixty years. It's supposed to make us recognize the tenuous state of world affairs. Because of the North Korean nuclear threat and the supposed state of global warming, we're told that the end of the world is near. Be afraid.

What a bunch of crap.

Just look at the history of this thing. In 1947 we were seven minutes till the end. By 1953 that number was down to two minutes. But by 1963 we were back to twelve minutes. I'm not a math major, but I do know how to tell time. Uncle Rico could testify that there's no such thing as a time machine; you can't go backwards. A clock doesn't work that way. The illustration breaks down.

This is just an excuse for condescending scientists to make themselves feel more important than they really are. Every generation thinks they're living in the last days. Additionally, it seems every generation thinks they can somehow prevent this end through their own intelligence. Kudos to the Bulletin of Nuke Geeks for giving it their best shot.

By the way, I don't wear a watch.

By The Book

Congress is now in session. I'm so relieved. A conservative columnist raised a fuss because Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, decided he was going to take the oath of office while placing his hand on a Koran. Many echoed the columnist's objections saying that this was a Christian nation and the oath was a slap to the face of our country's history. Actually, representatives don't place their hands on anything during the oath; they do it en mass, so it's much ado . . .

Ellision planned on taking the oath today while holding in his hand a copy of the Koran . . . a copy straight from Thomas Jefferson's library. Oh, snap. BUT if you're familiar with Islam you know that an English copy of the Koran is not authorized and is considered as "holy" as a Porky Pig comic book. That's why the irony is thrilling.

TJefferson, founding father who penned the Declaration of Independence [oh, and was President and is on the nickle], was a deist who played salad bar with the gospels to form his own kind of moral code. Yet two hundred years later we want to believe that these guys who led the rebellion against England were choir boys. And then we use that revisionist history to spout out ridiculous ideas like we're a theocracy.

Sidenote: I also find it interesting that we do the same thing with Scripture: we think the point of the Bible is to elevate and emulate the characters to hero status when there's really only one hero found in the pages [extra credit if you can figure out who].

Not sure what you want to do with all this, but if you're not ready for the new role of religion in American politics, get ready. The next two years will most likely redefine the past twenty-five years of faith's influence on our democracy.

The Butcher Of Baghdad

I'm going to admit something that might make you think less of me: I took time on my birthday to search the internet for video of Saddam's hanging. It might sound demented, but I was fascinated at the quickly fulfilled execution of the former Iraqi dictator. It caught me a little off-guard. I knew that Hussein had been convicted of approving a massacre and was sentenced to death but had no idea it would happen so quickly.

It seems like the circumstances surrounding the execution, the taunting he endured, as well as the hasty manner in which it was carried out, almost made Saddam out as a sympathetic figure. But an encounter I had a few years ago led me to view the man in a different light and, in turn, my recent Googling for video of his demise.

About four years ago, when I first started working at Christ's Church, I was involved in helping arrange different elements of the worship service. Coinciding with a message theme, we were looking to interview someone with an international view of the Christian faith. It just so happened that an Arabic family had started attending the church; they were from Iraq. We brought him in to do a preliminary interview in the middle of the week. I don't think I was prepared for his testimony.

His father became a Christian as an adult and reared his family as believers. Out of fear of the Islamic majority, they were forced to hide their faith and practice it in secret; Iraq wasn't a safe place to worship Jesus. The man told me about a Christian family he knew growing up. Soldiers showed up at their house in the middle of the night to take the men in for questioning. They never returned. This is what it was like to be a Christian under Saddam's rule.

So when the man had an opportunity to defect, he took it. He hadn't seen or spoken to his family in over fifteen years. He didn't even know if they were still alive. It was an eye-opening conversation. And it was the kind of testimony that the people in our church, some too comfortable in their own Christianity, needed to hear. But they never heard it.

The day the man was supposed to share his story he arrived for services an hour early. He said he wouldn't do the interview. He was afraid that someone who heard his story might somehow tell someone who could send word back to Iraq. If that were to happen, he said, his family there could be in danger. It was a risk, he said, he was unwilling to take.

And that's when I started to comprehend what it was like to live in a country ruled by a ruthless dictator. This man feared Saddam despite living on the other side of the world.

I know this story doesn't justify me trying to watch the man's death but it should add some perspective on the whole incident.

Effing Zune

Been immersed in a few projects this week, so the blog has taken a backseat. Thought this would be a great time to link to an article I've been sitting on for a few weeks. Since Microsoft is finally ready to compete with the Apple iPod for mp3 player supremacy, you think the would've done extensive research in anticipation of a market blitz. You could say that they thought of everything . . . oh, except for the fact that the product's name sounds like a Hebrew curse word. Yep, the name "Zune" is amazingly similar to the modern Hebrew f-bomb.

I will refrain from any additional jokes.

Merry ******mas?

Over at the House of Carr homepage, I added a tab for our eventual Christmas stuff. To save space, I merely labeled it "Xmas." A good friend wondered if this was akin to selling out,"taking the "Christ" out of "Christmas." Good question. Let me explain it here.

First, in order for me to ruin everyone's holiday, we need to understand that it was very unlikely that Jesus was actually born on or near December 25th. The date was picked a few centuries after Jesus lived, in order to replace the popularly celebrated winter solstice, a pagan holiday. The most common deity worshiped on this date was Mithra; in Israel, we were able to observe a Mithra shrine in the sea port of Caesarea [for more on Mithra & Christmas, see here].

The word "Christmas" is literally a contraction of "Christ's Mass." The Greek word for Christ is "Χριστός" [Christos]. Notice the first letter is an X, the Greek letter Chi [pronounced "Key"]. For over 1,000 years the word "Christ" has been abbreviated with an "X" or "Xp" throughout various Anglo-Saxon and Eastern Orthodox writings. So using "Xmas" still emphasizes the presence of Christ in the holiday.*

Somehow, as retailers began to use Xmas as an abbreviation for the holiday [which has been done for almost 100 years now in America], some believers felt it was an attack on Jesus, not recognizing him being the center of the holiday. I'm not quite sure where this rumor started. I suspect that it comes down to advertisers trying to save a buck. Whenever you can shorten an ad to conserve space/ink, you usually do it.

Regardless of how you spell it, it's impossible to deny that the the holiday that we celebrate as Christmas today has its origins in the Christian faith.

*I should admit that I really don't take issue with calling this "the holiday season" because the word "holiday" is derived from "Holy Day," again showing the religious nature of the celebration.

What Is It Good For?

You probably haven't heard of Malachi Ritscher. And that would probably disappoint him . . . if he were still alive. Ritscher was a war activist, who was deep disturbed by the Iraqi Conflict. He wanted to make a powerful statement against the war to get people thinking before the midterm elections. So four days before Election Day, next to a busy expressway during the Chicago morning rush-hour, Ritscher doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He died within minutes. This form of suicide, known as self-immolation, has been practiced by devout Hindu and Buddhist monks for many years.

Ritscher had prepared a suicide note, as well as obituary claiming, "if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world." He presumed that his violent death would make headlines around the country, but it didn't. It took the coroner five days to examine his remains. It wasn't until a local independent Chicago paper picked up on the story that it's begun to raise interest.

There is now a group of individuals who are heralding Ritscher as a martyr to advance their anti-war cause. They long to carry his anti-war platform across the country and inform people of his terrible, violent death. But these people should beware how closely they align themselves with Malachi.

This was a very troubled individual. It seems he had a life-long struggle with depression, which in of itself isn't bad, but it went deeper. Ritscher claimed that he was in a situation to kill Donald Rumsfeld one day on a Chicago street, knife in hand, but chickened out. And yet there's now a group who want to laud him as a hero and make sure that his death wasn't in vain.

But that's all a bunch of crap.

Look, everyone has an opinion about this war, and many Americans are ready to be done with it. But how does killing yourself add to the debate? Enough people have died in the conflict itself. Ritscher claimed that he killed himself so that his death could make a difference. This guy could've done many, many more productive things with his life than trying to be an anti-war symbol and ending it.

I'm sorry, but Ritscher was just being selfish, trying to go out in a blaze of glory [pardon the pun]. He thought suicide was his ticket to postmortem stardom. He bet that if he killed himself at election time next to a busy expressway that everyone would talk about him. But nobody really noticed. And chances are, if I didn't write this post about him, you wouldn't know about him either.

You probably never heard of Norman Morrison either. Morrison was a Quaker, opposed to the Vietnam war and he too burned himself in protest. This guy, however, to the act to a different level as he brought his daughter with him to witness his death. What difference did his actions make? I'm glad the media ignored this story. The last message we need to send to young people is that if you kill yourself for a cause then you'll make the evening news. These anti-war groups should steer clear of using Ritscher as an example. Next thing you know, this action will elicit a copycat effect.

From personal experience I know that suicide is never the answer. If this becomes a new American trend for extreme activism, then "barbaric war" won't be our only moral problem.

Safe

We're in a haze today at the news that two Cincinnati Christian University students were assaulted late last night on the Purple People Bridge. The woman was then kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and later dropped off at campus. This afternoon they have the suspect in custody. This is an incredibly unfortunate situation. I can't imagine what effect this will have on the students there, as well as what it will mean to the future of students being out in the community.

Just last week I talked to David Faust, President of CCU, about how encouraging it was that many students are now out and about in the city. Instead of sequestering themselves on campus, they are active in ministries throughout urban Cincinnati. Instead of being afraid of the city, they desired to be out in it.

And then this. When something as horrible as this happens, it can change everything.

I'm praying for this couple, the students at CCU, and the faculty and staff during this time and ask you to do the same. I pray that despite this tragedy, that the view of the mission won't be sacrificed.

Just yesterday I wrote a profile about Echo that is supposed to be featured in a future CCU publication. I made sure to emphasize that we desperately need to focus some church planting efforts toward the city. If anything, this confirms how desperately our city needs Jesus. Incidents like this can make people fearful of the city and drive us further towards suburbia or rural areas to feel safe.

But we're never going to truly be safe, are we? It's a daily reality I face with bringing my family here. I will admit that each night I pray that God watches over my wife and my child. But we can't let the fear of what could happen keep us doing God's work here. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 10:14,

"How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"

The Dream Is Over

Democrats take both houses. Rumsfeld's gone. Means nothing compared to the change rocking my world. I am worried for K-Fed. Who will be there for him? We should take up a collection.

As asked before, if they can't make it, who can?