Thanks to @peters0n for sending me the missing TED Talk from Nick Hanauer.

National Journal Restoration Roundtable

I’ve been intrigued by some of the postings of @almightygod on twitter lately. While sometimes coming off critical of people, I think he also does a good job of highlighting the voice of people who genuinely don’t believe in God.

To be honest, I get fed up with the way many people who believe in God consider this to be a moral undertaking to make people convert to a belief in God. It’s lame.

The way I see it there are two camps:

1. One camp believes, scientifically, that there is no evidence of a “God” that created matter. It’s simply about a scientific view that says, When we trace back the universe to the beginning, we don’t see evidence that there was a God that created matter.
2. The other camp, believes that tracing back the universe to the beginning is impossible because no matter how far back you go, you can’t make matter without matter unless matter is created out of nothing.

Once you’re in one of the two camps (i.e., either matter created itself or some being created matter), the rest is all the narrative you wrap around your origin view to make life meaningful.

I for one think there is an origin that begins with something so completely outside of our ability to understand that we call it God. Others, think, if we keep working on it through string theory, nano particles, black holes and otherwise, we’ll be able to keep getting closer to knowing a natural origin.

Neither of those interferes with my desire to make the world a better place. Neither worldview interferes with my belief that we should love one another. Be truthful with one another. Give to one another. Live in peace with one another. Turn from hate against one another.

I find very little threatening to my person about atheism. What I find more threatening is religiosity. Bible thumping, Koran burning, terrorist plotting and war starting.

To the theist:  You can’t love what you fear. Don’t fear the atheist. We all have a different starting point.

To the atheist: You can’t love what you hate. Theists have made egregious acts in the name of God. Hate stirs the pot.

Instead of trying to CONVERT your atheist neighbor, why not have a rational conversation? Enjoy coffee together. Treat each other nicely. Without motive.

More sounds better.

More resources.

More stuff.

More beautiful.

More productive.

More is the standard I have set for myself.

More outputs.

More accomplishments.

More pats on the back.

More results.

More is what I want and more is what I’m getting. In order to get more, I’m putting in

More time.

More stress.

More money.

More of my life.

In order to get more, my family is getting

Less daddy.

Less husband.

Less patience.

Less love.

I’m ready for

Less perfect.

Less outputs.

Less pride.

Less friction.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future. My future, my family’s future, God’s preferred future. Our framework is constantly changing and there are few people who keep up with changing landscapes and even fewer who stay a step ahead.

A few weeks ago pastor Efrem shared with our staff a quick study on our changing world. I apologize for not having the direct reference, but he shared these 4 Words that describe the current state of our world:

lim’i·nal (lĭm’ə-nəl) adj.
The threshold of a physiological or psychological response.

a·ce·di·a (ə-sē’dē-ə)
n.  Spiritual or mental sloth, apathy.

an·he·do·ni·a (ān’hē-dō’nē-ə)
n.  The absence of pleasure or the ability to experience it.

pre·hen·sion [pri-hen-shuhn]
–noun
1. the act of seizing or grasping.
2. mental apprehension.

So, I think If we put this all together we get a world which is experiencing less joy, ambivalence toward God, grasping for comprehension of change and on the cusp of a major cultural response to our lackluster culture.

How is this affecting the landscape?

1. Church and culture are becoming one in the same.
   People are ambivalent toward God because they can’t tell the difference between God’s followers and the rest of the world. They can’t tell the difference between church culture and pop culture. The lines are being blurred and we’re standing out far less than we ever have, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. Non-Christian non-profits are having greater impact in the world than Christ’s followers in many respects. Shouldn’t we be making headlines with our love?
2. We’ve given ourselves over to the pleasure of device over the pleasure of company.
   We need more explosions, more effects, more apps, more bells and whistles to get the same level of pleasure. In the drug world, this called addiction, in the rest of the world we call it entertainment. While our world is more connected through social networks (which allows an introvert like me to bust out of my shell a bit) we’re slipping in our ability to find time in our lives for face to face relationships. As we segregate ourselves from relationships, we effectively separate ourselves from the source of true pleasure: friends, family, and time together.
3. Many people believe we’re on the edge of a dramatic change in the way we live.
   Americans have enjoyed over-consumption and industrialization in every thing we do. Our food, our homes, our entertainment. Our relationship to these things has changed. In making life more convenient, we’ve made it less fruitful. We’ll take more care of our environment because we won’t have a choice. We’ll start growing our own food again, because people will be too afraid to eat spinach from the grocery store without getting a disease that never should have been there. We’ll stop using cookie cutters, because people will believe that if everybody is a star, we’ll start to miss the squares and circles.
4. Passivity will be replaced by relentless action.
   Instead of grasping at change, we’ll grab it by the *hehem stones and make a difference in the world. People are already doing it. A former nightclub promoter starts an organization that has already provided safe drinking water for over 750,000 people. A few friends start making tiny loans to people on the other side of the world and completely change the rules of the global economy.

So, Church, what are we going to do that will actually make an impact?

Will we lead or follow?

Will we work silently to to proclaim a name for Christ through actually loving people like he asked us to?

Will we choose to be agents of change or will we be continually changed by the agents of change?

We’ve gotten so good at talking about church, that we may have failed in our efforts to be the church: a conduit for the most radical shift in culture and justice. Go make a name for Jesus by following in his footsteps.

I’ve previously let the air out on twitter about how much I dislike hyper-blogging. Hyper-blogging is forced blogging. When you blog often with little new to say. When you keep bombarding with messages, until no one can hear them anymore.

Hyper-blogging is rampant. One of my favorite marketing minds, whom I look to for wisdom, puts up new posts, sometimes twice daily. Why? He doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of new ideas. Rather, it’s the same basic principles tweaked in new ways. I can get excited about this for a few weeks, but it quickly fades. The over-stimulation of even having to clear my RSS reader every day is annoying.

I think there’s a point at which you need to stop the bombardment of messages. If you’re blogging daily, or for those of you who are blogging multiple times daily, you need to know something:

You don’t have as much to say as you think you do. You’re message is like a fine cocktail. Putting it out there too often is like diluting it with water: It’s losing it’s flavor…and effectiveness.

This graph below is just for me, by me, based on my own personal tastes of the bloggers I love to read. No matter how much I love your content, I’m not going to devote all my time to it. I’ve got other things going on in life. I think you need to find your sweet spot.

Share your message less often, and strive for higher impact.

I just watched the 2007 TED Talk from Jaime Lerner. He’s an architect and city planner from Curitiba, Brazil, often looked upon as the most progressively planned city in the world.

I love how Jaime Lerner starts with,

“City is not a problem, it’s a solution.”

One of my growing frustrations since I came back from France, is the dependence I have on our cars. Even in North Minneapolis, which is an urban area, the reality of using our public transit to get anywhere is largely hopeless. It takes forever. One of the problems as Jaime pointed out is the lack of mixed use space in our city and the relative lack of opportunity to Live and Work in the same neighborhood.

My wife and I are fortunate. We live on the northside and we both work on the northside. Unfortunately, our childcare is rarely on the northside. This means, we have to drive to make life efficient. It sucks.

Economic, social and environmental justice are all interconnected. But it seems like with intentional design, fast action and planning based not on what I want, but based on what we need will make all the difference.

If we think about how bringing jobs to a community, hiring within a community and making the jobs accessible from the community can impact the economic, social and environmental justice of a community, then we would just do it. Because it seems like the right thing to do. Because God wants us to think about the interconnected web we all live in. And about each other. And because justice is the business of the church.

I want to live & work without making a huge dent in the ozone over New Zealand. Don’t you? The church needs people who are thinking about this stuff. And there are people thinking about these things for sure, but it seems like the voice isn’t loud enough. I had to go to another country figure these things out for myself….how are other people hearing the message…

I’m trying hard to keep this from being a rant…it’s not working. Now I’ll quit.

On a day when the Fed reneged on 50 years of monetary policy and bailed out Bear Stearns,

I SALUTE YOU RON PAUL.
Tell it like it is.

Created by a law over which Congress had no dominion, given rights to play God with the value of the dollar, and given free reign with no means by which to take back authority, the Fed continues to play percentage point games and doctor the dollar to pad the pockets of the already rich.

OK-
now that I got that off my chest, I suggest we pray for the millions of people affected by the foreclosure crisis, the down economy, the high cost of fuel and the search for economic justice at the bottom of the ladder. That’s what I’ll do I as I go to bed tonight.