Bullying

Last year, I wrote something about the need to fight anti-gay discrimination, even if we believe homosexual activity is morally wrong. If you still think these efforts are unnecessary (or even bad), please read this article:

Teen Commits Suicide Due to Bullying

I know one article probably won't completely change anyone's mind, but I hope it gets you to keep thinking about the issue. This guy didn't identify himself as gay, but a severe lack of tolerance for people who fit gay stereotypes and a severe lack of people sticking up for the guy led to his death.

Sex changes

Several years ago, I volunteered with The Mustard Seed, an organization that helps poor people in inner-city Edmonton in various ways, including serving meals and giving away donated clothing.

One day when I was there during a meal, one of the staff asked me to go to the clothing storage area and find a skirt for a man who had just come in. Yes, you read that right. This man was dressed as a woman, but not very convincingly. It was pretty clear he was a man. I went to the clothing storage and found a skirt and whatever else this person had asked for.

Later, I was watching the entrance with a new volunteer. This volunteer looked over at the cross-dresser and said, "People like that don't even deserve to live."

I was surprised to hear him say something so hateful, yet I wasn't willing to speak up.

I don't think I ever saw that volunteer again. Maybe he made a similar remark to someone on staff and they told him he shouldn't come back. Or maybe he decided on his own that he couldn't handle being in the same room as a transvestite or transgendered person.

I don't know if the man in the skirt was a transvestite (someone who likes dressing like the opposite sex) or transgendered (someone who thinks they should be the opposite sex). But either way, he clearly faced hatred. Now the Alberta government is planning to stop funding sex change surgeries for transgendered Albertans. Based on what I've learned about transgendered people, they feel like they were born the wrong gender, even from a young age. As far as I know, most of them were born with the body parts of a single gender, not both. This seems to be a much deeper feeling than simply not liking the way they look. Feeling this way can lead to severe depression and even suicide.

I don't know how much of the depression comes from the transgendered feeling itself and how much comes from the social stigma. I suspect some of both. So whether you support or oppose government funding for sex change operations, please oppose hatred toward transgendered people. Treat them like normal people. (And if you ever want tips on how not to treat minorities like they're normal, watch any episode of "The Office" where Michael deals with black people or gay people.) I'm sorry for not standing up for that guy at The Mustard Seed, and the next time I encounter hatred like that, I intend to say something.

Meanwhile, an article about this issue also mentioned that they're cutting back funding for youth suicide prevention. So now some teens could die because the government wants to save a few bucks? Does our government really care about our mental health?

A non-Easter story for Easter

A long time ago, a prophet said:

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
  for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted
  and to proclaim that captives will be released
  and prisoners will be freed.
He has sent me to tell those who mourn
  that the time of the Lord’s favor has come."

Several hundred years later, Jesus read this in public and said, "This Scripture has come true today before your very eyes!"

What truth isn't

"What is truth?"
--Pontius Pilate

A couple of months ago, Irish philosopher / theologian / pastor Peter Rollins visited Edmonton. I first heard of him last year when the Wittenburg Door interviewed him. He intrigued me. (Sample quote: "God spoke to me, repeating four simple words: 'I do not exist.'") But I got quite sick when he was in Edmonton, so I didn't get to see him. I decided to order a book of his instead. The one I got is called, "The Fidelity of Betrayal." Here's an excerpt:

When the truth affirmed by Christianity is thought of as constituting a series of factual claims open to being assessed by intellectual experts, Christianity opens itself up to a corrosive form of doubt that threatens to destroy it...

Thus the truth affirmed by Christianity ends up being treated like any other set of factual claims, claims that are provisional and open to being proven wrong. Even if one believes that the various claims within the Bible are wholly accurate, it is always possible that a new discovery in archaeology, history, or biblical scholarship will overturn the current body of evidence. Apologetics, in its attempt to defend the factual claims of the Bible through the use of reason, thus implicitly affirms the very philosophical outlook that undermines its own project, placing the truth of Christianity in the realm of rational reflection and thus into the realm of reasonable doubt and provisionality.

This has the effect of placing the Christian idea of truth upon a very tentative and fragile foundation, one that could not possibly justify an individual's unconditional commitment--one that would not be able to embrace Jesus' statement that one ought to lay one's life down for one's faith.

--page 92-93

By the way, for those of you who don't speak Christianese, "apologetics" is the rational defense of Christian beliefs.

I can identify with this. I get pretty irritated when people use bad arguments for the truth of Christianity, but I've come to realize that I can't possibly thoroughly evaluate every argument for and against the existence of God, resurrection of Jesus, etc. Even if I put a ridiculously large amount of time into it, I probably wouldn't even come close, and meanwhile I'd miss out on actually living the life God created me to live. But when I am confident that a particular argument sucks, it makes me feel like these people want me to turn my back on my rationality.

The book makes it clear that we don't need to turn our backs on rationality, but our faith shouldn't be subject to rationality either.

This leaves a glaring question: why make an unconditional commitment to Christ? I haven't finished the book yet, but I think he's going to explore this question. I don't know if he's going to give a clear answer. But based on the track record of this guy and other writers who think like him (like Brian McLaren), I'm sure I'll find his reasoning more satisfying than Pascal's wager and plenty of other arguments for being a Christian.

Amazing Grace

About ten years ago, I was on a trip with the high school band. We were waiting outside a building before we played at a band festival, and some people in the school choir started singing "Amazing Grace." This was a public school choir, and I'm sure some of the members weren't Christians. And at some point during high school, we played "Amazing Grace" in band. As I said, it was a public school.

Just last week, when someone asked me to play some music on the train on the way back from band practice, he asked me to play "Amazing Grace," and he may have been drunk or something. Before he made that request, I don't think he said anything that sounded spiritual, and he swore like a sailor. (I wrote about this encounter last week, and I didn't include most of the swearing.) It felt good to be asked to play that song in particular. It can be an honour to share God's grace in some small way.

I can't think of any other old hymn that has such a broad, timeless appeal.

What is it about this song that makes it so timeless and its appeal so broad, even to people who most of us wouldn't think are Christians? Could it be that they really do realize their need for God's grace but they don't want the "Christian" label? Or do they not believe in God but consider the song a simple and beautiful expression of a beautiful idea?

I know that some songs tend to cut through my own cynicism and doubt about Christianity, if only for a while. Sometimes it's simple, classic songs like "Amazing Grace" that do that best.

Saxomaphone

Last Tuesday, I was on the train on the way home from band practice. After I got on the train and sat down, a guy had a question.

"What's in that case?" he asked, referring to my saxophone case. He sounded like he wasn't all there mentally, maybe drunk or mentally ill. (Some people have bad gaydar; I have trouble telling what's impairing a person mentally. And my gaydar probably isn't very good either.)

"A saxophone," I replied.

"Were you just rocking out?"

"I was at band practice."

I think he thought I was in a rock band or something, and I tried to explain what kind of band I'm in (a concert band, kind of like a high school band, but with adults), but he kept interrupting and didn't seem to get it. And he talked about Homer Simpson saying "saxomaphone." It was all semi-intelligible.

"You play guitar too?" he asked.

"No."

"You fucking asshole. You play music but you don't play guitar?" Judging by his tone of voice, he didn't mean this as a serious insult and he wasn't going to hurt me, but he was quite surprised that I play music but don't play the guitar.

Then he asked me to play something for him. So I asked where he's getting off, and he said he's getting off at the next stop, which is two stops from the end of the line. "But I'll stay on the train until the last stop if you play something." I found myself wondering if it's illegal to play a musical instrument on the train, but I guessed that nobody would care, so I started setting up the saxophone.

"You'd better rock out."

I was having trouble even thinking of a song that I remembered how to play, but as I finished setting up, I thought of a song we had just played at our concert last weekend called "Fidgety Feet." I think it's a ragtime song. We had the melody near the start of the song, so I played that small part of the song.

"Cool. Can I have your phone number?"

"Um. No."

I thought of another song that I know that would probably be more familiar: "Heartbreak Hotel." He seemed to enjoy it, and another guy on the train applauded a bit. I was starting to enjoy this.

"Do you know that Lisa Simpson song?" At first I thought he was referring to the part of The Simpsons theme song where Lisa improvs on the saxophone. That part of the theme song changes once in a while, so I don't remember any specific versions. Then he said something about Michael Jackson, so I thought he might be talking about the "Lisa It's Your Birthday" song. I didn't know how to play that song, but I remembered a little bit of The Simpsons theme song from when we played it in high school band. So I played a line or two of that song.

Then he asked me, "Do you know how to play 'Amazing Grace'?" I do know how to play it, so I played a verse. He tried singing along for a bit of it. Like his talking, it was semi-intelligible. We were almost at the end of the line, which is where I get off, so I started putting away the saxophone. He asked if I could play a bit more, but I said I have to go. As I got off the train, he was still sitting there, semi-intelligibly singing another verse of "Amazing Grace."

Irish accents

This morning on The Bear (a local radio station), Yukon Jack went on a rant complaining about fake Irish accents. (To hear it, go to the Yukon's Big Yap page and listen to the March 17 thing. But at the time of writing, it's not posted yet.)

This got me thinking. I wonder if St. Patrick could do a good Irish accent. Because he wasn't Irish either.