As most of you know I live in Kansas City. Many of you are also aware of what’s been going on next door to us over in Kansas with the whole intelligent design being taught in schools controversey. It just goes to show how self-centered I can be, but having worked through this issue way back in jr. high I just assumed that since I had made up my mind it must not still be that big of an issue right? That my friends is wrong. Recently this became apparent when some folks in my church attended a seminar on intelligent design over in Kansas. They came back with a lot of enthusiasium about this hot “new” topic and wanted to bring the discussion to our own church.

Well before I get into that, let me first give you a little of my own story. I grew up in a conservative little farming & oil town in New Mexico where being a follower of Jesus was linked with a very conservative evangelical understanding of the world, and the “L” word (liberal) was akin to foul language. My parents are very conservative and in the early 90’s my father proudly thought of himself as a “ditto-head.” In the midst of this world my mother stuck out as one of the few (if not the only) Christians I knew who was a firm believer in theistic evolution. Mom is a scientist and comes from a family of scientists. Mom is also a committed follower of Christ. I found Mom’s paradox puzzling as a kid who’s only understanding of Christianity was a pretty fundamentalist one. But it didn’t take long for me to understand where my mother was coming from, she believed that God is creative enough to use something as amazing as evolution to create this world and the species in it. In fact that made a lot of sense to me and has ever since.

So fast forward to 2005, and the intelligent design debate raging around these parts. When these folks came back to the church pumped up about intelligent design my first reaction was one of defensiveness. My own history of balancing my faith in Christ with theistic evolution wasn’t always encouraging. Where I grew up, being a Christian and agreeing with Darwin were pretty much proof that you were a “secular humanist” and weren’t really a Christian… not born again anyway. So my gut instinct has been to defend those kids who find evolution to be particularly compelling but even more so are devoted to following Christ. Seeing them get the cold-shoulder from their church peers has always bugged me and I’ve wanted to be a champion for them saying, “there’s room for them among us!” So when my fellow brothers from Church suggested working intelligent design into what I was teaching I felt like I was going to be pressured to tell smart scientific kids that they had to choose, God or science.

After a few emails and a short talk I found out that these parents feel like their kids (who believe in intelligent design) are being told they can’t be good scientists because they believe that God created our world and the life so abundant in it. So they want to champion their kids and say, “you can be a Christian and a good scientist!” And to that I say amen. I suppose that my own preconcieved notions of “the MidWest” made me think that it would be the theistic evolutionary kids who would be shunned (and in Kansas, I bet that’s still a reality). I still have a lot of reservations about trying to prove how and where and when God went beyond the normal process of evolution to “speed things up” as it were. I am content to let God’s ways be a mystery and have faith that God is creative, God is the creator, without the complexity of blood-clotting doing it for me. I think that intelligent design as an apologetic for Christianity or as a tool for evangelism is a bad and dangerous idea, but to understand that the God of Jesus Christ did create this world and continues to create and will eventually redeem all of creation, plants and animals included… there surely is room for that to co-exist with (and enrich!) science.

I just finished a book by Brian D. McLaren called The Story We Find Ourselves In, and Brian does an amazing job of walking through some of these issues, and also tying them into the larger story of God creation, calling, redeeming and consumation of this world.

What about you, did you grow up in a place where either your faith or intelligence was questioned because of how you understand creation? How do you encounter this today?

This Friday my cousin Chad flys out to visit me and while he’s here we’re going to the Broncos game at Arrowhead to see the Orange Crush take on the Chiefs. I looked up the weather for the game and we’re supposed to get snow! Tell me folks, other than God coming to us in human form as Jesus, is there anything better than football in the snow? I submit that there is not! It should be a good time of hanging with the cuz, sitting in front of the fireplace and watching the Broncos go to 10-2 on the season against the Chieferinas.

ps-Extra points if you can tell me what’s wrong with this picture.

Patrick Hruby over at ESPN’s Page 2 has a fascinating article about artificial intelligence and advancements in computer-generated graphics. Taking a cue from the newly released Madden ‘06 for the XBOX 360 Patrick addresses the all too lifelike graphics of the newer players… the problem is that they’re getting too real. If you’ve played these games you know what he’s talking about. The graphics of the players has steadily increased to the point of an almost lifelike appearance. Something is missing though, perhaps it’s the eyes, the way Donovan McNabb’s lips move when he calls an audible… something is missing. Patrick points out a theory by Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, something called the Uncanny Valley.

This is the theory that we emphathize with and emotionally respond positively to things that we can find human qualities in, the more qualities the better our emotional response… to a point. When they start to resemble humans too much, we start to focus on what makes them non-human. So while the old Madden ‘94 game is cute and nostalgic, the new one seems cold on some level, or just not quite alive.

Perhaps this is in some part because of the imago dei. Maybe those of us whom were created by God have an innate sense for when another “human” has not been created by the Creator, but by a creature.

That being said… what they’re doing these days is pretty impressive “cold” or not. Check out the new Madden videos and see for yourself. The players now watch the ball into their hands, they breathe harder when they’re sprinting downfield, grimace when tackled… almost just like real life.

Saturday afternoon I attended a session put on by the Bonhoeffer Theology and Social Analysis Group at AAR here in Philadelphia titled: War as Responsible Action? The Uses and Abuses of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Susan Ford Wiltshire, Robert O. Smith and Robert Vosloo were the three who gave papers during our session. Susan focused on Bonhoeffer and “telling the truth” as not being a constant thing, but something new and alive for every situation. Robert O. Smith took a look at the plethora of misappropriations of Bonhoeffer in popular discourse from presidential speeches (is anything not misappropriated in these) to blogs and Robert Vosloo drew some comparisons of Bonhoeffer to Beyers Naudé of South Africa (where Robert hails from).

In Susan’s presentation she asked why Bonhoeffer was being used to support the war, she answered her own question by saying that she couldn’t come up with any good reason for using Bonhoeffer in this way. She had mentioned that her friend Jean Bethke Elshtain was one of the latest to throw Bonhoeffer into the mix, in this case in support of the “war on terror” and the “war on Iraq.” This sparked something in my own mind, a memory from when I had seen Elshtain speak at William Jewell College in the city I pastor in. After speaking for over an hour about “Christian Just War Theory” (but never mentioning Christ) Elshtain fielded some questions. My question to her was, “If this JWT is Christian, please demonstrate how it is essentially centered in Jesus Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount or in the gospels.” Her reply was this, “We’ll I’m certainly not a theologian, but… Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

After listening to Susan’s question of why use Bonhoeffer, and then Robert O. Smith’s several examples (hawkish and dove) of the misuse of Bonhoeffer I made a link to that Elshtain lecture back in March. Bonhoeffer, I think, is so often used (by the hawks) because Jesus is obviously out of the question in being used as a justification for war (especially wars of aggression, like Iraq). The deficiency of Christ as a justification for war poses a problem for those who are called Christians, but the legend of Bonhoeffer serves this role. I say legend, because it is the “pop culture” or “soundbyte” Bonhoeffer that is useful in justifying war. The Bonhoeffer that most Christians know about was three things, a martyr; a protestant saint; and a failed assassin. It is the innocence that martyrdom implies and the righteousness that sainthood also implies that casts assassin (and therefore warfare) in a justified light when Bonhoeffer is misused in this way.

The problem of course is that Bonhoeffer was a pacifist, and didn’t feel “justified” in the Abwehr plot on Hitler’s life, but bore the full responsibility and what he saw as a grave sin. As Robert O. Smith also pointed out, Bonhoeffer was taking action as a participant within his own country, Smith pointed out that Bonhoeffer wasn’t used as a justification for Iraqis to rise up and kill Hussein but rather for the US to invade. The entire witness of Bonhoeffer’s life calls into question the kind of violence that his name is so oft used to justifiy. Lastly and most importantly Bonhoeffer was a dedicated follower of Jesus Christ and wouldn’t have approved of using himself as a measure for ethical action in substitute of Jesus Christ.

Tonight I saw what has to be the best movie I’ve seen all year (even besting Crash). Good Night, and Good Luck was written and directed by George Clooney and stars David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow, the CBS journalist who’s editorial show helped turn public opinion against Wisconson senator Joseph Mcarthy and his witch-hunt of suspected communists or communist sympahtizers during the 1950’s. This film, is as much a commentary on the present state of politics and media in the United States as it is anything else. The film beigns with a speach Murrow gives in the late 50’s where he prophecies the doom of televison as a medium. His chilling words are prophetic when he speaks about televsion becoming nothing more than wires and lights meant to entertain and lull the already comfortable and rich into further complacency. I was reminded of a speech I’d heard Noam Chomsky give in the Distorted Morality, when he mentioned that professional sports are a huge drain on the brains of Americans. Most of us pay far more attention to how certian sports teams are doing than we do to foriegn policy, among other issues which actually matter to the future of our society and the good of the world. Now while I will continue to watch the Broncos play on Sunday’s I think I’ve all but renounced SportsCenter, and will certianly be trimming down my television watching to the bare minimum. I need to read more, and watch less TV. If Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam didn’t convince me of that, Good Night, and Good Luck sealed the deal.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

“To love another person is to see the face of God.” That is the last line of the amazing musical rendition of Victor Hugo’s monumental novel Les Miserables. I just got back from seeing Les Mis with Kara and it was… scrumptulescent! Les Mis is theological poetry the likes of which the world rarely is graced with. Hugo’s main character Jean Valjean is the embodiment of a Christlike parable from the moment the compassionate priest “buys him for God” by forgiving him of theft that would surely have sent him back to prision for decades more.
Valjean is the picture of mercy and compassion as he saves Fantine from jailtime after she is attacked by a man whom she would not sleep with. Again Valjean is the embodiment of integrity as he goes to confess his true identity so that another convict would not go to jail in his stead. Oh my I could go on and on and on. Suffice it to say that Valjean is an amazing picture of a person who truly understands grace and redefines their entire life by that grace, that can only come from Christ. If bookstores sold the Bible and Les Miserables together as a “value pack” or something, I would whole heartedly approve.

Seriously folks… it was church.

Who am I? I’m 24601!

Update your feed to my site! It will now be detectable from the main page chuckp3.com. As I’ve learned a bit of php I’ve totally redesigned the structure of my site to make it much more simple, easy to update and give seamless integration with my blog. The only problem is that my site feed is still stuck back in an old folder, so it works but you can’t access it or “detect” it from the main blog page… well no more! So update your feeds!

Update: Still working out some of the kinks… the site feed may not be up for a few mintues. I’ll update again when it’s working.

Update 2: Okay the site feed works now! If you’re using a newsreader you should be able to detect the atom feed from chuckp3.com. If you’re using Safari, just click on the site feed link in the right column and subscribe. If you’re using Internet Explorer… I’m sorry for you.

As I sit here in my all too familiar spot at the crave cafe amidst piles of Barth, objections to Barth and commentary on Barth I need to take a break. I must say that Hans Frei was right when he said that reading Barth is far more interesting than reading restatements of Barth by others which just appear wooden next to his original work (although Hauerwas is doing a good job for me this evening). So in the midst of my hours of reading Barth this evening I want to take a break and reflect a bit on what happend this morning.
Congratulations to you if you clicked on the “read more” and wanted to know who the picture is of, if that’s Karl Barth and what any of this has to do with Brian McLaren (who is actually the above pictured).
This morning through afternoon I was down in “O-town” or “Olathe, Kansas” or “Stepford” as some are want to call it, at Mid-America Nazarene University with about 350 others (along with Mike King, who posted about the seminar here) to listen to a series of lectures by Brian McLaren. It was a good general overview of the shift towards post-modernism/post-colonialism in our world and what this new context might mean for our modern models of ministry. If you’d read Generous Orthodoxy, or A New Kind of Christian or any other of Brian’s works a lot of this was review, but very helpful for the throng of Mid-Westerners who showed up to see if this guy was a pluralist afterall, or who were getting some continuing education credit and had never thought of post-modernism in the first place. Anyway… great stuff. I think it was the first time that a lot of these pastors were confronted with the modern marriage of the nation to the church in Civil Religion or “sacramerica” as AKMA Adams likes to call it, as well as the value of habituating ourselves into obedience to Jesus. At one point Brian said, “it wasn’t until I was reading the sermon on the mount as a young man that I realized that I’d read about loving my enemy, but I’d never been taught how to do it!” He went on to talk about the value of fasting and how it taught him to not be a slave to his impluses and how after two years of fasting he was finally ready to turn the other cheek. He spoke about the intentionality of our liturgy being Christian spiritual and ethical formation. It was really just a very encouraging time, and I was so glad that so many of our pastors and seminary students were starting to think about following Jesus in ways that might challenge some of their modernist/colonial assumptions.

…well back to Barth!

Latest on the Blogosphere is the “your name needs” search on google. Some weird things pop up, so without further adieu…

Charlie Needs a Cloak. (according to google this is about 80% of what Charlie needs)
Charlie needs a home!
Charlie needs to be writing for a major news magazine.
Charlie needs a new hobby.
CHARLIE NEEDS HELP!
Charlie needs to keep track of some of the messages that come his way.
Charlie needs the opportunity to try out various activities that are appropriate for his skill level.
Charlie needs parents who understand sibling relationships
Charlie Needs A New Cloak (again with the cloaks!)
Charlie needs a ride to school tomorrow.
Charlie needs to suck up to the school board and get out of city politics.
Charlie needs to be recognized more.

Well that was fun… try it out and see just what it is that you apparently need. I guess I should be on the lookout for a good cloak.