My Favorite DC: Batman

A couple of the most interesting relationships in the DC universe are that which exists between Superman and Batman and that which exists between Green Lantern and Batman. Both of which are being explored in the first story arc of the new Justice League. While this particular comic won't deal with the relationship between Batman and Superman until the second issue, we know that Superman believes Batman to be fighting the right cause but that Superman does not like Batman's methodology, and vice versa. Justice League #1 does have plenty of time to deal with Batman and Green Lantern by showing that Hal Jordan wants to shine bright and let his enemies see him coming whereas Batman wants to stick to the shadows. Batman sees Superman as a boy scout and Green Lantern as a glorified police officer (and let's face it: Batman has a pretty bad idea of what police officers stand for from living with the corrupt police of Gotham), while they see him as a mistrusting misanthrope dwelling in the darkness. And yet all parties deem the others necessary.

When I lived in Fort Worth, Texas, I was attending a Divinity School. If you don't know what that is, then I guess it's pretty similar to a Seminary. I was attending a Master's degree program aimed toward Christian service, toward service of for the sake of God and man. The further I got into the program, the more I became skeptical and even cynical of Christian ministry, not because of the ministers, or, at least, not for the most part. I was surrounded by people training to be ministers who were incredibly thoughtful, critical and brilliant. They cared about people and were willing to devote their lives to them. But the people in the churches wanted their churches to support their laziness, their decision not to help their fellows in need, their businesses and their political parties. They wanted the Christian message to cater to their needs rather than allowing the radical ideas to unsettle them.

Each and every one of us was given a choice. We could serve in a church and project the light and the hope. We would be constantly hurt by those who chose selfishness of Dallas Cowboys football games over the socially conscious message of the Bible. And we would be paid better and have better job security if we didn't rock the boat. Or we could rock the boat. We could say what we felt called to say. We could do the right thing by suggesting that we ought to help those who have no protector, to do whatever we can to make sure those who have never had a voice can speak for themselves, to question the powers on this planet, the government, the wealthy, etc. Most of my friends have chosen to serve in churches, to hold the banner up, and to do the right thing in the brightest, most visible way. But I felt like I couldn't do that. I couldn't be paid for my service, because I feared that it would corrupt me and silence the voice in my ear that tells me what is right. I had to be able to point out hypocrisy wherever it arose, be it in my country, in my school, in my church, in my apartment complex, in my family, or inside of me. For the longest time, I felt alone because of this. I wondered why I couldn't just be like the other people. I felt sick to think that I was pursuing another degree and adding money to my student loan debt only to emerge without viable job options.

Batman was my way of making sense of all of this. Batman was the individual who was willing to put everything else aside for the sake of what must be done. And I'm not talking about the ends justifies the means sort of stuff that Kiefer Sutherland is always doing when he's Jack Bauer on 24. (Batman does not use firearms. Batman does not kill. And Batman does not torture. He takes the high road, even when it makes everything harder for him. He chooses the smart option and the right option over the expedient option.) I'm talking about the fact that sometimes people have to sacrifice their own well-being for the sake of doing the right thing, the fact that sometimes you have to risk losing friends and you just have to be a prickly individual because justice hangs in the balance.

Now, I am making my way in life. I continue to look for teaching and writing positions, but until then I just have to do hard work where work can be found. I'm starting a family with my girlfriend Amy. And I'm doing everything I can to stand up for what I believe is right. You may say that all of this diverges from Batman's identity, but I think you're wrong. Batman's life is devoted to hard work in the form of preparation and confrontation. And though he's something of a rough individual, he has one of the biggest families in the DC universe. He's mentored a variety of Robins, Batgirls and Batwomen. He's loved, truly loved, a couple of women. And after all of his time playing the surrogate father and mentor to orphans, he now has his own son named Damien to father. Though he's a difficult man, Batman is a beloved member of the superhero community.

In all truth, I think I kind of agree with Green Lantern and Superman. Batman shouldn't exist. He shouldn't have to exist. But, like them, I think it is a better idea to fix the world that created such a difficult man than to try and "reform" the Batman himself. Batman is a mechanism of our broken world, our corrupt world, and his purpose is to right the wrongs of a sick society, not by any means necessary, by the right means. This is why I look up to Batman, and this is why he is one of my favorite DC characters.

The Pitch: Banning All Religion

I took a Religion and Violence course during the last semester of my Master's degree. As a matter of fact, I'm going to be published in an upcoming book edited by Charles Bellinger regarding religion and violence. I found this competition regarding advertisements on banning all religion really hilarious and really thoughtful.



This Australian program is called The Gruen Transfer, and the segment is called "The Pitch." I think I might be interested in seeing some of the other pitches, such as bringing back child labor, invading New Zealand, and euthanizing everyone over eighty.

Disturbing Scenes From the Brick Testament

The Brick Testament claims to be, "the world's largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible." What this description fails to say is that all of the illustrations are done with Legos. A recent article from 22 Words titled "10 disturbingly violent biblical stories depicted with Legos," selects only the most violent illustrations from The Brick Testament. Here they are:

Cain Kills Abel

The Flood

Job's Suffering

Caananite Kings Executed

Ehud Kills Eglon

 
Jephthah Kills His Daughter

The Levite Dismembers His Murdered Concubine

David Collects and Delivers Philistine Foreskins

Judas Kills Himself

Hell

 

Religion Gone Wild: The Stained Glass Windows

Thus the wild-fire of idolatry now flies furiously through all the tribe of Dan, who, like the thieves that have carried away plaguy clothes, have insensibly infected themselves and their posterity to death. Heresy and superstition have small beginnings, dangerous proceedings, pernicious conclusions.

            -Joseph Hall, Contemplations

Idolatry means making or owning an idol for religious purposes, or worshipping it, whether it be a representation of the true God or of some false god. ... the worship of the true God in the form of an idol is accounted no less grave a sin than the worship of devils.

            -John Milton, Christian Doctrine

Religious superstition is not dead.

            -Thomas E. Miller, Portraits

While sitting in my "Religion and Violence" class I heard a Christian minister tell a story, and though my memory is neither photographic nor eidetic, I have made an attempt to recount the story here:

I was preaching about the woman who was accused of adultery by a crowd (John 8:2-11), and at the end of the sermon I handed everyone in the chapel a stone and said they could throw them at me if they wished. A woman spoke up and exclaimed that, after hearing this sermon, they could not possibly throw stones at me. The congregation couldn't have stoned me in the first place. Of course, I stood in front of the stained glass windows just in case.

The last sentence was uttered in jest, the suggesting being that breaking a church's stained glass windows with a stone is more evil to a Christian than assaulting or killing another human being. Though it was intended as a joke, I felt kind of scared of the joke's implications. I know that historically, and if we're being honest, presently, there are Christians who value objects, depictions and buildings more than they value human life. I believe that a joke like this would never even be told if there weren't enough people in the world who understand the impetus behind it in her audience, and the fact that this many people understand what it is like to value objects over living human beings is the reason for my fright.

When I was in elementary school a girl once brought an odd-looking book into class. A group of people gathered around her and began gawking at the foreign characters. It looked like the sort of strange script one might find in a book of sorcery in a film, perhaps even The Necronomicon. I remember approaching this girl and saying, "What's the big deal? It's just some stupid book." The little girl's face became grave and her eyes met mine and she replied, "This is the Bible." I felt sick, like the bottom of the world had disappeared from beneath me. The sound of children saying "Ooooooh" became a din, rising and rising in volume and intensity like the score of a Kubrick film.

This scene took place at a public elementary school, and yet everyone was convinced that my act of calling the Bible stupid, even accidentally, was not only something that would get me in trouble with our teacher, but something that would invoke the wrath of God. If children had more than a thirty second attention span they might remember me to this day as a heretic for what I said that day. It was commonplace for kids to tear down other kids with words, pranks and violence - I remember girls saying "Iew" whenever I'd pass by and boys kicking me and calling me names simply because I was fat - but it was forbidden to say anything negative about the book.

It is not difficult for me to think of ways in which religious objects are treated with deference. People wear crosses and stars of David around their necks. There are some religious traditions whose Bibles are gilded with gold, incredibly ornate. It is not uncommon for people to kiss such a Bible to show respect. Most pilgrimages revolve around the idea that certain places are either more holy in and of themselves or more holy because they contain powerful religious relics, possibly even the body parts of saints and heroes. While one may think first and foremost of Muslim pilgrimages to Mecca, Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and the mass pilgrimages that Christian devotees have taken in centuries past, this trend is certainly not limited to "the people of the Book." Buddhists have, for some time, travelled and given respect at mounds called stupas which are said to contain remains of the Buddha and other relics.

Even Micah, the protagonist of Judges 17 and 18, holds a great deal of deference for religious objects: "This man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and teraphim, and installed one of his sons, who became his priest" (Judg 17:5 NRSV). The New Oxford Annotated Bible describes a teraphim as "some type of household deities used for divination purposes," and though an ephod is usually understood as "an elaborate priestly vestment," in conjunction with the teraphim it is more likely to refer to "some sort of idol" (382). In Judges, David M. Gunn writes that ancient historian Pseudo-Philo identifies this teraphim as images of boys, calves, a lion, an eagle, and a dragon, "each appropriate for relaying the diving response to a particular type of request" (233). When I think of this passage I no longer think of silver statuettes. After the story I heard in my "Religion and Violence" class, I see these animals painted on glass, growing in beauty as the light shines in on a congregation. But now they have transformed into Biblical heroes, Noah courageously saving humankind from a great flood, father Abraham, Jacob who would be known as Israel, Moses the deliverer, Jesus the savior (probably in at least more than one scene), etc. Perhaps we can even throw in Constantine, Augustine and Aquinas, later heroes of the faith.

The following verse, Judges 17:6, casts the biblical figure of Micah in a different light: "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes" (NRSV). This is commonly interpreted as a criticism of Micah's actions in constructing these images. It has been argued that one of the most significant themes in the entire book of Judges is that of idolatry. But can we view the importance of Bibles, crosses, and stained glass depictions of biblical stories as idolatrous in the same light as silver, gold and wooden statues of foreign or household gods? A traditional Catholic answer is that there is a distinction "between an idol, the likeness of something false, and a religious image, the likeness of something real" (Gunn, 234), but this is certainly not the end of the discussion. Many Protestant theologians have, with varying degrees of vehemence, proclaimed that likenesses, whether of "some fake god" or of "the true God," are all under the criticism of Torah commands against graven images.

Wherever you fall on this distinction, there is a discussion to be had which is less concerned with the proper application of doctrine and more concerned with the value of human life. Not to pick on the Catholics too much - I believe that nearly every religion or denomination has some sort of violence or violation in their pockets that can be revealed with enough shaking - but the extent of violence perpetrated during the Crusades alone justifies a critique of Christian attitude toward the value of objects and human lives. In Shusaku Endo's challenging novel Silence, protagonist Sebastião Rodrigues (based on real-life Jesuit Giuseppe Chiara) is forced to trample a fumi-e, the Japanese word for a carved likeness of Jesus Christ, in symbolic renunciation of Christianity. If Rodrigues refuses, thousands of Japanese Christians will be tortured and killed. Silent throughout Rodrigues's persecution, Christ finally speaks to Rodrigues in this time of important decisions, saying, "Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here" (176). Endo's Christ denies power to the superficial act of trampling a carving and verbal renunciation, suggesting both that the human lives at stake far outweigh the fate of the fumi-e and that true faith cannot by limited by its superficial expression.

I read Endo's Silence for a course called "History of Christianity in East Asia," and while discussing this book there was a student who felt betrayed by Rodrigues. "Why couldn't he just remain faithful? Why did he have to trample the fumi-e?" she asked. This course was taught at a seminary which gave me good reason to believe that this student was not just a Christian but a future leader of the Christian community. I consider this Christianity gone wild. In the story of the woman accused of adultery, Jesus responds, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7 NRSV). In response to the congregation who is ready to stone an adulteress in a modern-day church, there is a part of me that believes a minister would respond, "Don't you dare throw a stone in the sanctuary. If you're going to stone her to death make sure you drag her out back. Oh, and stay away from the prayer garden. Brother Judd put a lot of good money into the prayer garden and we don't want it to go to waste."

Let's hope that part of me is wrong.

Role Models, Part Three

Role Models, Part One can be viewed here.
Role Models, Part Two can be viewed here.

One of the best days I've ever spent in Fort Worth, Texas was when good friend Chad invited me and mutual friend Rodney Thomas to his house for dinner. Aside from having a fantastic meal and discussion with Chad, his wife Christina and children Autumn and Mark, I saw an example of a fantastic, loving family in which the father, Chad, is able to be his own person, weird as he wants to be, and it all just works. Previously, I had feared that I would have to sacrifice a whole lot of my personal identity in order to be happily married with children. But Chad is a role model to me, a wonderful alien in this world who has courageously asserted himself as himself, making no such sacrifices as I'd imagined I'd have to make, and the result is not only a functional family, but a flourishing family. His children are so bright and passionate that I suddenly want to have children just so my progeny can inhabit the world Chad's children create. If you can't already tell, this evening left quite an impression on me.

Christina confessed that she and Chad have little in common outside of their children and their religious faith, but they could have fooled me. Chad is passionate about comic books, specifically Green Lantern, and it was clear just sitting at that dinner table that everyone present shared some degree of that passion. Christina kept up like a champ when the discussion digressed to DC comics. The kids were well-versed in Bible stories, but also in superhero stories. Autumn recited to us the Hebrew alphabet, and I have little doubt that she could say, with the same confidence, the noble oath of the Green Lantern Corps. Mark has recently become obsessed with the Batman villain Mr. Freeze after hearing the tragic story of his origin in the midst of trying to save his beloved wife Nora.

After dinner, we retired to the living room. As we watched two episodes of Batman: the Brave and the Bold, Chad and Autumn discussed how disrespectful it is when men whistle at women and when women wear unnecessarily revealing outfits (or rather, when people, most often men, draw women wearing unnecessarily revealing outfits). During commercials, Christina commented on a Wonder Woman article she was reading in Entertainment Weekly. After the kids went to bed, Rodney and I joined in on Chad and Christina's weekly Smallville viewing. Chad would later tell me that one of the keys to maintaining a lasting relationship with the one you love is doing things together beyond simply occupying the same space. Smallville appeared to be one of these activities for Chad and Christina.

At the end of the evening, I expressed to Chad my elation at meeting his family. I think I went so far as to say that Chad's family was the perfect family.

"It was a good night for us," Chad said, keeping everything in context. "They're not all like that. But yeah, I have a pretty great family."

I think Chad was being modest. The way that Chad's family looks at one another hides no disdain - they truly love one another and are interested in one another. With Chad and his fantastic family I find that I have both proven and disproven my previous point regarding the importance of stories over role models. On the one hand, the folk stories of the Bible mingle with comic book stories - perhaps the most pervasive modern/postmodern American folk stories that we have - as Chad and Christina breed in their children a culture of ethical consciousness. On the other hand, I see Chad as my role model, someone who lives a life similar to the life I'd like to live some day, whose example I feel inclined to imitate and whose advice I feel inclined to follow.

This seeming contradiction points to a point that has just now arisen in my consciousness, that having role models in and of itself is not the problem. The problem lies in removing the role model from the context in which the role model enacts its story and asserting some sort of moral infallibility, suggesting that the individual is incapable of doing wrong. Comic book character Hal Jordan / Green Lantern is just as responsible for the development of moral reasoning in those who read his narratives as are the narratives themselves, but if we believe he is always good, then we excuse all the terrible acts of murder and betrayal, many of which have since been undone in the comics, that he commits as Parallax the living embodiment of fear. Consider also Peter Parker / Spider-man facing his dark side in the guise of the alien symbiote known as Venom. I bring up Spider-man because more of us can relate to him. (Hal Jordan is a fearless monument of a man who would have been a hero regardless of whether or not he was given a ring of power from the Guardians, but Peter Parker was a normal kid when he was bitten by that radioactive spider. Whereas few among us are courageous, bold and creative enough to represent an entire sector of the universe as a Green Lantern, any passerby can fall victim to a radioactive spider and become Spider-man.) Peter Parker / Spider-man is bound by the responsibility his Uncle Ben taught him to do the right thing, but Venom tempts him to cut corners, to use his strength for social benefit, to betray the very responsibility that is such an integral part of Spider-man's origin story.

Rather than follow Green Lantern and Spider-man into their darkness, we as readers are expected to criticize their actions and the evil that results. Hal Jordan's greatest loss and Peter Parker's alien chemical dependency pose traps that any of us could fall into. But in these dark times, the reader actually becomes the Green Lantern to the fallen Green Lantern and the Spider-man to the fallen Spider-man. We know what is good about these heroes, and we use that good to become the heroes ourselves in their absence. (Let's hope that we're better heroes than Azrael in Batman's absence. Am I right?) We tell Hal Jordan that he's not being himself and we pray Peter Parker overcomes his temptation. When the hero is away we successfully fill the void by knowing how the fallen would act were the fallen not so fallen, how the fallen ought to if this darkness is to be overcome.

When I was young, my father would tell me Bible stories, but he also preached of the youthful and rebellious spirit of Peter Pan. My mother would speak of the great things my grandfather Paul Slater had done both for our community and for our family. Two years ago I was asked at a conference on world aid work what my goal in life was. I answered that my desire is to save the world. Was I informed by Jesus or Moses or grandpa or Peter Pan in aiming for this haughty goal? To some degree, yes, I was, but to a greater degree I was driven by Spider-man, the X-Men, Batman and Superman, by the stories I've heard that change the way I think and the person I have become. My brother David was told by the family members who revoked my parents' guardianship that comic books are evil. If good and evil are defined by the positive and negative impacts that our stories have brought about, I think Bibles might be considered much more evil than any comic book ever has been. I'm no history scholar (I dabble...), but I've never heard of a crusade devoted to wiping out all humans who support the Sinestro Corps or a war against the nation harboring the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

I've spent some time talking about my childhood, but in truth this whole discussion on role models stems from my own desire to have children. I often wonder if I'll be too controlling, seeing danger in all the choices of my future hypothetical offspring. Or perhaps I'll be too laid back, perceiving freedom where there is only lack of guidance. In the end I think I'll follow Chad's lead. I'll love my family with all my heart and provide them with only the best stories I've ever come across, regardless of their holy or profane source. When they get into something I'm not familiar with, probably some Disney channel fad or something, I'll try to keep up with it too. most of all, I will talk with my children. It seems to work well for Chad, and in retrospect it worked really well in my upbringing as well. (I still have fond memories of watching X-Files with my mother every Friday / Sunday night.) Maybe in the process I'll become a role model for my kids. I suppose nothing is impossible when you live a life worthy of telling in story form.

Movie Ideas

Untitled Scavenger Hunt Film

A scavenger hunt movie, like Scavenger Hunt, only the guy who died is like a super-powered psychic who foresaw what items could be collected by any combination of strangers and lists, so he gathers together one particular group of strangers and lists in order to gather parts to some insane machine that resurrects him or does something cooler and more unexpected than resurrection.

Eve 6000

In an alternate future, the religious right gets its way and completes the transformation of the USA into a theocracy, and the first decree of the Holy 'Mercan Emperor is that since there aren't as many Eves on the planet as there are Adams there will be a lottery where certain people are forced to name their daughters Eve and things get all dystopian/1984/Anthem/Brave-New-World-ish because agreement becomes more important than liberty or whatever.

Iron Man: Behind the Mask

An action-packed Iron Man movie that takes place within Iron Man's armor and in real time where the back story and the actions of other characters are told via video feed and communications to the suit of Tony Stark who can't remember what has happened in the last 24 or 48 hours or more (he'd probably chalk it up to a heck of a hangover, but it would be revealed that it's so much more insidious than a hangover) while Iron Man is constantly threatened by enemy attack throughout the entire movie.

Hanging

An Indie-type film that takes place in a small apartment, narrated from the perspective of a telepathic hanging plant and based on the true story of Narrator, the telepathic hanging plant that Fiona and I had in our Brooklyn apartment.

Higher Education

 

A teen movie where gossip gets so widespread and efficient in a California high school that all the students develop telepathy and then some sort of plot ensues.

Clobber Texts in Context

The LGBTQ community finds one of its most common enemies in the church, and one of the reasons for this is that many people believe that the Bible supports their anti-homosexual perspective. For some time now, a series of Bible verses (Genesis 1:27-28; 2:18, 21-25; 19:1-25; Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10), commonly known as clobber texts, have been appropriated for the battle against the LGBTQ community. For decades, however, people have been questioning whether these verses ought to be used in this way. The following is a short exercise in placing these verses in context and determining what the Bible says regarding the lawfulness or unlawfulness of loving and consensual relationships between adults of the same sex.

Genesis 1:27-28; 2:18, 21-25

Perhaps I'm not the smartest banana in the bunch, but I have a lot of difficulty seeing how the Creation account has anything to do with the LGBTQ discussion. None of these passages say anything about homosexuality, positive or negative, and yet these verses continue to be used as clobber texts because of the command in Genesis 1:28 to "be fruitful and multiply."

There are two good reasons that this commandment to be fruitful does not make sense as an anti-LGBTQ passage. First of all, if all relationships are defined by their necessity of resulting in the production of children, then we really need to protest those heterosexual couples who are unable to have children due to sterilization and impotence, those heterosexual couples who remain together after the female has gone through menopause and can no longer bear children, those heterosexual couples who choose not to have children because of career motives or the guarantee that the child would be born with a debilitating disease or the feeling of irresponsibility of bringing a child into a world where hate dominates faith and common sense in religious discourse, and also those heterosexuals who remain single unto death. Second of all, if bearing children becomes a sacred law of being in a relationship, we have to deal with the difficult question of whether simply bearing one child is enough to satisfy your legal duty or whether one ought always to be pumping out children one after another in intervals of nine months or less until death.

If you are reading this you are committing an act of treason before God because you are reading a blog and not procreating, and this is only one of the ridiculously negative consequences of turning the creation story into a rant against homosexuality.

Genesis 19:1-25

 

I've heard more people talk about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as God's definitive expression of hatred for homosexuals than any other Biblical story. The text never explicitly names the sin of Sodom as homosexuality. We are told that Sodom is a wicked place, we are given an example of wickedness, and then the Lord completely annihilates Sodom. There are Bible verses that speak of the sins of Sodom. According to Ezekiel 16, Sodom's sin is greed and indifference. In Matthew 10:12-15 and Luke 10:10-12, Sodom's sin is simply inhospitality. Jude 7 and 2 Peter 2:10 refer to Sodom's sin as sexual immorality, not of men laying with men, but of mortals violating immortals.

The New Testament accusations of inhospitality and sexual immorality are perhaps not worded strongly enough. While they are sufficient to suggest that the destruction of Sodom was not in reference to consensual loving relations between adults of the same sex, it is insufficient to describe the horrors of this story. The men of Sodom were attempting to violently gang rape a pair of guests, possibly the most terrifying breach of any concept of hospitality that one can imagine. When the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is twisted into an anti-homosexuality polemic, it distracts believers from the real problem of sexual violence.

Leviticus 18:22; 20:13

The prohibition of men laying with men in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26) is the only place where homosexuality is directly condemned. The reason the sexual act is taboo is because one of the males must betray his masculinity and act as if he were a female. As a result of this enactment of femininity, both of the members involved are liable for the condemned act.

The Holiness Code is concerned with what is customary. Rather than dealing with ethical concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, harmful and beneficial, it deals with social etiquette. (The modern equivalent of rules of etiquette, only now-a-days we don't slaughter animals when we put our elbows on the table.) Among other things, it asks men to act like men and women to act like women. Paul writes, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). If we're to take Paul seriously then a code of masculinity and femininity has no place in our understanding of morality.

If this is not convincing enough, consider all of the other rules modern Christians must follow if we are to condemn homosexuality. Wearing two different types of fabric together is an abomination. Eating pork, shrimp or rabbit is an abomination. Planting two different kinds of seed in the same general area is an abomination. Anyone working on the Sabbath is a criminal. Anyone with round haircuts or tattoos is a criminal. Anyone reading a fortune cookie or horoscope is a criminal. And let's hope you don't like football, because playing with the skin of a pig is prohibited as well.

Romans 1:26-27

Romans 1:26-27 is significant for two reasons: it is the only place where there is so much as a complete sentence regarding same-sex relations, and it is the only place in the Bible where female same-sex relations are referenced. While this is one of the only passages in the Bible that has anything whatsoever to do with homosexuality, it is first and foremost a polemic against idolatry.

In Paul's journeys he was able to see a great many things, Greek things, that his predominantly Hebrew audiences would have never witnessed. What he saw in Greek pagan religion was sexual practices he'd never before encountered, drunken orgies, castration, prostitution, any number of acts that Paul considered strange, and these acts as means of worshiping and honoring Aphrodite or Dionysus.

What is the message Paul intends to get across in this passage? Don't worship idols. If you do, the living God will abandon you and leave you to your empty rituals. To say that these people were abandoned by God because of homosexual acts or to say that these people were punished by being turned into homosexuals is simply a bad interpretation. This passage implies that you cannot have both the fullness of God through Jesus Christ and at the same time worship inanimate objects and statues. The choice is not one of gay versus straight; it's a choice of worship of God versus worship of false idols.

1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10

These two passages are part of a series of laundry lists attributed to Paul in which certain sins deter someone from entering the Kingdom. The two words that are commonly understood to be anti-homosexual are translated in the NRSV as male prostitutes and sodomite, but in other translations like the NIV these two terms are combined and translated as "men who have sex with men."

The translation of these two Greek words, malokois and arsenokoitai, makes all the difference in determining whether Paul was addressing people involved in homosexual relationships. Both of these words have a stronger connection with prostitution than they do with loving homosexual relationships. I doubt that we even have a word in English that describes the intended meaning of either of these words. The best understanding of the meaning of malokois is adolescent boys who prostitute themselves to older men. In this context, arsenokoitai, a very difficult word to translate, most likely refers to these old men who pay young children for sex. In English, we would call men like this lechers or pedophiles.

This is yet another example of our ignorance to serious crimes like prostitution and pedophilia as a result of misinterpreting the Bible according to our hateful biases.

The Willennium So Far - 2009

In the mid- to late-nineties one of the most important American cultural traditions was the Fourth of July Will Smith blockbuster. The tradition had a proper beginning with the film Independence Day in 1996 in which Will Smith saves the world from aliens and says such profound lines as "I have GOT to get me one of THESE!" and "No, you did NOT shoot that green [expletive deleted] at me!" This was followed the next year by Men in Black in which Will Smith saves... the world... from aliens... (Author's note: it feels like I wrote this sentence already...) and then in 1999 by Wild Wild West. These latter two movies are significant because of Smith's musical contributions. For Men in Black, Smith wrote the hip hop song "Men in Black" which features a sample of Patrice Rushen's funk standard "Forget Me Nots" that Smith raps over. In the song "Wild Wild West," written for the movie Wild Wild West, Smith samples the Stevie Wonder tune "I Wish."

As a result of the popular tradition of Will Smith blockbusters with songs of the same name featuring easily recognizable funk and soul samples, Smith found himself on a particularly influential platform. On November 16, 1999, Smith released the album Willennium. With the combination of the Y2K hysteria, blockbuster success and the propaganda off of his album, Will Smith declared the coming millennium to be the Willennium. Such are the days that we currently live in.

Though the Fourth of July Will Smith blockbuster trend has continued with such films as Men in Black II (2002) and Hancock (2008), the first decade of the Willennium has not been what the world expected a Willennium to look like. These films didn't see the magnitude of success and popular culture following that their predecessors had, and the huge spacing between them makes one feel that the tradition may be coming to an end. Furthermore, Smith has been featured in enough "serious" films (The Pursuit of Happyness, Seven Pounds) that Hollywood production companies appear to simply make scrips that would work for Will Smith to be in. In other words, Will Smith no longer plays roles or characters in movies; rather, movies are built around the personality that is Will Smith.

There is also the unfortunate possibility that Will Smith is Satan, which compounds the difficulties of the Willennium. Revelation 20:7-8 says, "When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order tog ather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea." What this would suggest is that Satan Will Smith was released into a position of power at the end of the previous millennium, and that his unification of all mankind under the sign of the Willennium is a means of bringing about a strife-filled end-times. Gog and Magog might here be understood as producer DJ Jazzy Jeff and label Columbia Records.

The evidence, however, to conclude that Will Smith is Satan is somewhat unconvincing. Your beloved Fort Worth Movie Examiner would like to suggest that there is hope yet in this Willennium we are witnessing, that there is still room for the courage of the human spirit, for men and women who stand up against the evil aliens and robots and protect this great planet. That, after all, is what Will Smith has always stood for, and by proxy, that is what the Willennium stands for. Though our parents just don't understand this Willennium, it is not theirs to understand. It belongs to us and to our progeny. Perhaps Will Smith was a little big for his britches when he declared this millennium to belong to him. That is not the issue under scrutiny. The issue is fulfilling the potential of the Willennium, making this thousand years the best possible thousand years.

...unless Will Smith is actually the devil, in which case let's just try to survive.

Retcon Files: The Heretic

While I have serious problems with the physics of traveling back in time and changing elements of the past for a variety of reasons, I've recently decided to engage myself in serious thought experiments regarding what I would change if given the power to do so. The result of this line of thinking is a blog column devoted to retroactively changing the continuity of my character's back story. I am calling it the Retcon Files.

I'd like to think that I'm the kind of person who stands up and courageously spits in the face of everything I believe to be wrong in the world, proclaiming the word of what is right. But it's hard to sustain such a belief in the face of some events that have happened in my past. In retrospect, I would like to substitute courage where there once was cowardice. This is all vague and abstract. Let me get to the concrete.

Some years ago I went to church with a girl I was dating. She brought me to an enormous Wesleyan mega-church in an amphitheater, the kind of place where there are no longer individuals, just people huddling together in anonymity and waiting for someone to enforce what they already believe. It was a couple of years after September 11, a time when even some of the most fundamentalist churches were making sure their congregations knew there is a vast difference between the Islamic extremists who perpetrated the destruction of the twin towers and the other peace-loving believers of the Islamic faith. I remember sitting in on a Youth Group meeting at a friend's church, another mega-church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and hearing them explain that the terrorists in question represent Islam as much as the KKK or the Third Reich represent Christianity.

The preacher at this Wesleyan church proclaimed that the God of the Koran is not the same as the God of the Bible even though the Muslim tradition is supposed to be an addition to the story that began with the Jews and moved through the Christians to them. Believe what you want about this issue: even though I don't support such a belief, I actually have little problem with those who do. The problem was the preacher's argument. Why is it impossible for Christians to believe that the God of Muhammad is the same as the God of Israel? "Because I can't believe in a God who commands His people to kill others."

I'd hope that the problem with this argument is evident. In the Old Testament of the very Bible that everyone at that church used are stories where God requires the chosen people to rid the Promised land of the unbelievers through military force. The God of Abraham would be known because this tiny force of Jews destroyed much larger forces. The impossibility of such a feat would make it so people would glorify not the Jews, but the God of the Jews. Meanwhile, the Koran only justifies force in the instance that all of Islam is threatened by a pervasive force that wishes to wipe the teachings off of the planet.

If I were to go back in time, I wouldn't worry about what my girlfriend at the time thought of me, or what her parents thought, or even what the rest of the congregation thought. I muttered angrily under my breath back then, but I now know that there was only one proper response to such ignorance. I ought to have stood up and shouted a resounding "BULLSHIT!" trusting that the amphitheater would assist my voice in being heard. I don't care if they would be required to drag me out of that church against my will and work toward getting me excommunicated from the Christian faith. That minister's words did nothing but to incense one polarized group of individuals against another polarized group of individuals. It explained a tragic act of terrorism as an inevitable result of a backwards system of ideals, when in fact it was the result of individual human beings manipulating texts toward their own ends. If nobody was killed, injured, persecuted or harmed in any way as a result of this preacher's words, then we have witnessed a miracle indeed. If somebody was harmed in some way, even on the smallest level, then the imperative for me to travel back in time and be the one voice to stand against this tyrant is even greater.

So help me, God.

NO HAIR CUTS

Literal reading, and hatred and ignorance - these are a few of my least favorite things.

This picture comes from a blog, but I believe the picture says it all.

Hate Letter

My father recieved the following letter in the mail recently:

Here's a transcript:

"Rick
"Got your name at Jordan's party! You look awful! You look like Charles Manson. Do you love the devil or God!I think the devil the wys yw way you look. It's hiddious [hideous]. You admire yourself it seems. Yo'ure out of touch with society. Your family all hate it and are ashamed to be your relative. Go back into the woods and live there: society does'nt need this kind of look. Your family doesn't want to admit that your'e a relative. Get real!"

* * *

Some of you may think this is the most ridiculous, uneducated, misrepresented, foolish, overzealous, idiotic, moronic, sick, disgusting, ridiculous, (Did I say ridiculous?), misguided, superficial letter you've ever read, but I'll have you know that this is actually an important document. What you might not know is that this missive is actually a form commonly used in the secret history of Christianity. Let me give you an example:

When Martin Luther wrote his 95 theses, he nailed them to the door of the church and immediately ran away. You see, Martin Luther never actually signed the document, and that's what makes it funny. For quite some time this was the prevalent practical joke in most Christian circles. A couple hundred years later the nailing of anonymous theses, probably due to some scribal error, had evolved into the placement of burning feces on the doorsteps of unsuspecting neighbors. For much of my life, this was the most popular prank, until the year 2001 when animal waste was replaced by ambiguous black monoliths.

* * *

All joking aside, I would like to issue my own letter to whoever wrote this letter to my father:

"To whom it may concern:

"Your spelling is hiddious.

"Sincerely,

"Justin Richard Tiemeyer, son of Richard William Tiemeyer

"P.S. You're a self-righteous coward. You've created a god in your own image, a god who values appearance and social status over the contents of a person's character, a god who ought to be killed as soon as possible.

"P.P.S. In case you didn't catch it earlier, my name is Justin Tiemeyer. If you're reading this blog, you know how to get a hold of me. I hope some day you have the courage to insult my father to my face."

Make Way For the Homo Superior

Here's an excerpt from a pretty interesting article that analyzes the works of David Bowie as if they are a religious text comparable to other religious texts.

Like Christ, Ziggy spreads a radical gospel of love. But while Christ admonishes his followers to abandon the nasty, brutish logic of the Mosaic world view (“eye for eye, and tooth for tooth”) and emulate his unconditional, turn-the-other-cheek love for all mankind (a message so revolutionary it convinces the apostle John that God, in a word, is love), Ziggy preaches a gospel of transcendental eros. “Let all the children boogie,” he decrees, in “Starman,” using a mothballed hippie verb that, back in the day, was a euphemism for doing the nasty.

In Ziggy’s erotic beatitude, the solitary self is consumed by an overmastering “idiot love”—a transport of sexual rapture that obliterates the boundaries of the conscious ego and “spark[s] the fusion,” in the song “Soul Love,” with…uh…the Cosmic Whatever. Is Ziggy’s space-hippie sermonizing about transcending adolescent alienation? Or hieing your astral ass off a dying planet through some orgasm-fueled transport of rapture? Bowie’s starman, a prophet who thinks with his crotch, isn’t big on specifics. All he knows is that “the church of man, love, is such a holy place to be,” a proverb that manages the neat trick of crossing eros with agape, reconciling them in the profane sacrament of soul love (“Moonage Daydream”).

Read the whole article here.