As I’ve noted before, I wrote/transcribed/edited/washed dishes/consulted for a (now-defunct) online Christian music magazine in the mid-to-late 1990s. My first interview was with Carolyn Arends, who had just signed with Reunion and was about to go on tour opening for Rich Mullins. It started as a live online chat with about 30 “on-lookers” (this was 1995, so that was bleeding edge), followed by a phone call and a couple emails. All in all, Carolyn probably gave us about 3 hours of her time, less than a month before she had to leave her hubby behind for the tour. Pretty gracious, if you ask me.

Originally, I was supposed to be on an airplane, returning from a business trip, on the Friday night that Rich’s tour was to hit Atlanta. So my wife and I bought tickets for the next night’s show in Birmingham. After buying the tickets, but before the interview with Carolyn, my trip got cancelled. When I talked to Carolyn on the phone, she offered me tickets and all-access passes for the Atlanta show. Needless to say, I took her up on her offer.

We picked up the tickets/passes at will-call about 30 minutes before the show. Being uncharacteristically adventurous, I decided I’d try to press my luck and see how “all” access these passes really were. We found a door with a taped-up “No Admittance” sign, and walked through it. Turned out to be a meet-and-greet with Rich for the Christian bookstore employees who had helped promote the show. No one turned us away, so we stuck around.

Rich wound up talking to our little group for 15 minutes before the show, all through Carolyn’s act, and most of the way through Ashley Cleveland’s set (the other opener). At one point, a stage hand came out and said “Mr Mullins, 20 minutes til you’re on”. Rich thanked him and resumed talking. This was repeated at 15 minutes and 10 minutes. After the guy left at the 10-minute mark, Rich looked down at his ratty t-shirt and cut-off khakis, and said, “He probably thinks I’m going to change before going out there.”

(He did change a bit. He kicked off his sandals before going on-stage.)

With about 5 minutes to go, Rich excused himself, and actually did have to get ready to go on. The other folks went into the auditorium to watch the show. I looked at my wife, shrugged, and we followed Rich backstage. When it was clear that no one was going to stop us, my wife leaned in and said, “I like your new hobby.”

After 2 songs in Rich’s set, Carolyn spotted us and came over. I had a copy of the interview with me and gave it to her. She was delighted at the length (as I’ve noted before, the lack of size restrictions online let us print in-depth interviews rather than the half-page stuff that print journals were doing).

Then she dropped the bomb. Not being familiar with the venue, she asked, “How’s the sound out there?” After a bit of hemming and hawing, I admitted that we missed her whole act because we were talking to Rich. But I quickly assured her that we’d be in the audience in Birmingham the next night.

And we were. And it was good. And she was great.

Tim Challies has written one of those “random stuff you didn’t know about me” posts.  My favorite one begins with

I started at a new high school for twelfth grade . . .

Not that any traffic from me will even show up on his stat counter, but I’m gonna make you go to his post to read the rest.

OK, I was gonna let this go, because it happened just as Slice of Laodicea was “mortally wounded, and [the] deadly wound was healed“. But after Scott noted the pot calling the kettle pigmentationally complete, I figure it’s worth bringing up.

Are you sitting down? Not holding any food or drink in your hand or mouth?

Comments at Slice were not carefully screened.

Yeah, I know. I fell off my chair laughing too.

In mid-December, I sent the following note via Slice’s email form:

In the comments of a recent posting:

(URL deleted, since it doesn’t work anymore, anyway)

JSR stated that “RICK WARREN IS NOT A CHRISTIAN!” and that those who would disdain such an emphatic statement — made by a human about who God elects — are “used wimps”.

Given the careful screening that occurs for comments on this website, is it fair to assume that this is your stance, too?

Of course, this isn’t anything new. JohnD noted that “Faithful” once commented about Warren:

Houston will be a desert before I accept a liar, a slanderer, a self-promoting name-dropper, and a blasphemer of the Holy Spirit as a brother in Christ.

I didn’t hear anything back for quite some time. So I re-sent the same note again on January 4, with this preface:

I do not wish to incorrectly assume malice or willful dismissal of another believer, so I will assume that either (1) the holiday rush caused a delay in response or (2) my note somehow got lost in the bit bucket. Here is a repeat of what I sent on or about December 13, 2006:

I got a response back this time. Apparently, Ingrid didn’t catch the irony of that first clause, but I think Scott’s post shows consistency there.

However, in true Ken Silva-style, Ingrid latched onto 2 of the 122 words in my note (”careful screening”), ignoring the main point, and informed me that comments on Slice were not carefully screened. She told me that her criteria for what gets through is simply that she looks for apologists for the emerging church and Rick Warren, and comments that are truly malicious.

(Apparently, saying that Rick Warren is definitely going to hell isn’t malicious. And neither was Faithful’s comment. Or half of what Ken Silva writes. But I digress . . .)

She also noted that she had one other person helping her with comments, though only occasionally.

I wrote back:

Well, I’m hardly emergent and — more often than not — I find Warren frightening. As a sinner, I am capable of malice, however I try to keep it in check — especially when commenting on others’ web sites.

So is it the other person who disapproves 9 out of 10 of my comments? If so, it would appear that he/she is being over-zealous and/or is not aware of the criteria which you use.

By the way, you didn’t really reply to the initial question. Is it your stance that God has not chosen Warren to be among the elect?

This time, Ingrid forgot to put on her Silva Shades ™ and actually responded to my actual points. Well, sorta. She said that even guessing who is saved is “unbiblical”, then rambled off into a defense of Slice’s mission. Then she came back to my question about my comments, claiming ignorance of why they so seldom made it through.

Frankly, given the odd criteria of what is not considered malicious, I’d have to guess that even respectfully disagreeing with the author is considered malicious, and that’s what got sunk my comments. But, contrary to Ingrid’s later statements, this does not make me “mad”.

I responded:

I’m glad to know that you consider it unbiblical to even guess (let alone state unequivocally) whether or not someone is saved. It is sad that the same thing is not believed by all of your writers.

But then, my question was about your commenters, whose opinions (one would imagine) vary much more widely than that of your writers. So I shall say no more of Camp’s unbiblical beliefs.

Note: I wasn’t the one that said that Camp was being unbiblical. I then asked (in the same note):

To re-iterate your earlier statement, when perusing comments for dis/approval, you “look for emergent grandstanders, Rick Warren fans and the truly malicious comments and the rest get through.” And “the rest”, I take it, would include significantly unbiblical statements such as the one that I quoted below (and that, sadly, appeared several times written by multiple people in the comments on your site). Does this mean that you place a higher priority on being anti-emergent and anti-Warren than on being pro-biblical?

I “surprisingly” didn’t receive a response to that note.

But that last question is the heart of that matter. At first blush, it’s what’s wrong with most watchblogs (just substitute “emergent” and “Warren”, as needed, for any other watchblog’s favorite whipping boys).

But let us remember not to be more anti-watchblog than pro-biblical, either.

In my last church, I was the youth pastor’s right-hand man. So when God called him away to another city in 2001, I became the unofficial-volunteer-interim-youth-pastor-sort-of until the church hired a new (real) one. (I was tempted to get business cards with that title on it.)

When the youth pastor left, the only instrumental talent in youth leadership left, too. Fortunately, one of our youth stepped up and said that he played guitar and would lead praise/worship for us. I knew him well, and he was a good kid — probably the most spiritual, growing youth we had — so I told him to give it a shot. Turned out great.

His first week, his last song was one that he had written himself. Since the kids hadn’t heard it before, they were questioning him about it afterward, and he admitted that he was the author. They were in utter awe that one of their peers was a songwriter.

The next week, one of his songs was the chorus of Audio A’s “Big House”. Some of the kids hadn’t heard it before and asked if he had written that too. Before he could respond, one of the other youth (who had heard it before) said, “No, that’s an old, old song”.

It’s from 1995.

Bad enough her little girl married a d@mnyankee. Now this:

And I’ve been in Georgia for over 2/3 of my life!!

Been thinking about this from a number of angles for quite a while. Now it’s time to shoot off my mouth.

Admittedly, the incident that pushed me over the edge and got me to write about this was the hub-bub over the Francis Chan video. (And for those who haven’t seen it yet, but need QuickTime on your computer like you need a hole in the head, here’s the video on YouTube.) But even if you’re tired of that whole thing, please hang with me.

What? You haven’t heard about the hub-bub? Lucky you. (If you wanna catch up — not that it’s necessary for this post — just swing a dead cat in Google. You’ll find it easily enough.)

Chan’s video (in case you haven’t seen it) is a brief Gospel presentation that includes (among other things) how badly man has blown it, our need for a Savior, God’s love for us and His provision of that Savior. There were several detractions regarding this video, but the one that simultaneously angered and puzzled me the most was the revulsion with which many considered Chan’s statement that “God is crazy about you.” Now, OK, perhaps this is not the ideal way in which to describe God’s love for us — man does not create mental imbalance in God. But I have to wonder if there even exists a word or phrase in any human language that can properly and fully express God’s love.

Scripture tells us that no man can look on the face of God and live. Moses wanted to see God’s glory, and God told him that he couldn’t handle it. God gave him a small glimpse of His back, and just that brief instance along with talking with God in general, made Moses’ face shine so brightly that other people couldn’t even handle that.

I know of no one who claims to be a Christian who would dispute this story or its application. God is glorious — so much so, that we can’t handle it. Yet somehow, there are those who would dispute the intensity of other attributes of God — and none more often than His love.

Why is that? Why would we somehow seek to diminish any attribute of God? “Well, yeah, man can’t handle God’s glory, but I’m manly enough to handle His love.” No, you’re not. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men:

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE LOVE

Do you understand that God is incessantly dialing it back so that our finite brains don’t explode? Oh great, that means He loves us even more, that He’s willing to shield us from the full force of His love.

In the never-ending “worship wars“, one of the allegations of the hymns-only crowd is that too many contemporary choruses focus on God’s love (and conversely, not enough focus on His other attributes). I won’t bother expounding on the fact that their examples are cherry-picked and their approximations greatly exaggerated. But, regardless, God’s love is the primary attribute that allows man to have a relationship with his Creator. Many of His attributes, while not contradictory to His love, are such that — in and of themselves — they leave man in a really bad state. So pardon me if I focus a bit too much for your taste on the boundless love of God. You can write about it; you can sing about it; you can read about it, but ultimately:

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE LOVE

Another issue that is often expressed is that worship and teaching in general focus too much on God’s love — and this leaves the typical American male cold. (Oddly, this concern is often raised by those who regard any type of seeker-sensitivity with great disdain.) Steve Geyer used to joke that — on the rare occasion when two men will hug each other — they pat each other’s backs three times — once for each syllable of “I’m not gay”.

What are we afraid of? God’s ways are foolishness to the natural (unsaved) person — he cannot comprehend them. Surely we don’t dispute that. So why do we balk at an image of God — Who is most often described as male — as loving men, simply because of the connotations that fall within the bounds of the understanding of the natural man? Is it not enough that God’s love for us is unfathomable, that we have to further complicate the matter by confusing the issue of a God-man relationship with that of a man-man relationship?

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE LOVE

The disparity between God’s infinite holiness and our finite selves wrapped in total depravity is such that only an imcomprehensible love could bridge the gap. It’s not an issue of getting to a point of “arrival” at which you can comprehend it. It’s simply not going to happen — at least, not on this side of heaven, and maybe not at all.

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE LOVE

And if you’re smart, you’ll thank God every day that this is the case.

As you may know, Phil Vischer, creator of VeggieTales, has moved on to other things. Well, he still works on VT, but more in a consulting role. But he has started a new creative shop, Jellyfish. Initial output includes pigs in business suits and 47 beavers. (Just go look.)

Perhaps most entertaining of all, however, is a Flash-based newscast featuring the best anchorman to ever read a teleprompter, Buck Denver. To paraphrase John Piper, Buck Denver would kick Ron Burgundy’s tail.

There are over 30 newscasts already (usually 2-3 minutes each). I still haven’t watched them all, but what I’ve seen is great! It’s obvious that Phil is deeply disturbed, which is a very good thing for a man who works with puppets.

On a more serious note, be sure to check out “The Jellyfish Story” in which Phil details his trip through the land of VeggieTales and how his new venture got its name. Some really good stuff to think about.

My RSS feed broke when I moved.  I think I’ve fixed it, but wanted to test it.

(In other words, there is no real content in this post.)

Well, as I suspected, the whole blog went blooey.  But we’re back with minimal effort.

Miss me?