I don’t have plans to visit the Middle East soon. But Matt’s rules for travelling there make me a think a little harder about how I live in rural Illinois, or urban California, or anywhere in between. Cringe if you want to at the cliche–it’s no less true that we’re all travelling, wherever we are, however long we’ve been there.

There once was an Idiot who moved to Thailand.

As if towering over most Thais and wearing dorky Rob Bell glasses weren’t enough, the Idiot was sometimes insensitive and obtuse, pointing his feet at people, neglecting to give monks his seat on the metro, and the like. Thankfully, Thais just smiled it away (mai pen rai!), and the Idiot was none the wiser.

Then the Idiot moved to Iraq, and that all changed.

Last month marked my second year of living in one of the most challenging countries on earth, and, needless to say, this idiot has learned a lot—the hard way. Two years of travel throughout the region, among countless tribes, and in several tense cities like Tikrit and Fallujah has helped me see that Thailand was a coconut-cakewalk compared to the challenge of Iraq.

In the Middle East, the cultural rulebook is impossibly thick and can be pretty intimidating for outsiders, but here are five tips worth considering before you and your friends brave this part of the world:

**NOTE: Before the trolls skip down to the comments section to decry my rules as generalizations, let me go ahead and beat them to it: these are generalizations. But they’re generally true—even in modernized, expat-ridden cities like Dubai and Cairo (both cities where Westerners frequently make the news for their cultural duncecappery).**

© Matt Willingham

1) Slooooow. Dooooown.

This is first for a reason. Most of the Middle East moves at a slower pace. Even larger metropolitan cities emphasize a relationship-first mentality, and it can seem a little plodding to even the least scheduled Western mind.

In many traditional shops, one doesn’t simply make a purchase. They sit, drink tea, chitchat about whatever is on TV, and discuss family. Then, once you’re tired of sitting there, you talk a bit more and eventually get to business.

My advice? Don’t fight it. You’ll never win, and you’ll waste a lot of time feeling frustrated with people—something they’ll pick up on. My local friends are often surprised at how fast I walk, talk, type, and eat. Sometimes they even assume they’ve done something wrong or offended me; why else would I be rushing?

I was taking it all at my usual pace, and it was sending all the wrong signals. Slow down.

© Matt Willingham

2) Don’t photograph people without asking—especially if they have guns.

If you’re going to make the effort to visit the Middle East—especially the more uncharted areas—it seems like a waste to not take pictures. But traveller beware.

My poor mother used to freak when she heard I’d had a gun pointed at me, but I think she’s finally getting used to it. The times it’s happened almost all involved me sticking my lens where—according to the powers that be—it didn’t belong.

A few days after arriving in Iraq, I walked downtown to get a look at a protest someone told me about. There were fires everywhere; thousands of people’s cheering was starting to sound less and less cheerful; at one point it started looking like it could turn into a riot.

I only hit the shutter a few times before I was eye-level with thick-black-mustachioed cop, shouting “Mistah, no peek-chas!” Rather than yelling back or taking off, I deliberately put my on my lens cap, sat down, and chatted with him awhile. We got to know each other for a few minutes (See tip #1), let the tension thaw a bit, and I asked him again if I could please take a few pictures. He relented, and he even sent a buddy to make sure I got access to a hotel rooftop overlooking the entire protest.

© Matt Willingham

3) If they haven’t been cooking it for 1,000 years, don’t even bother.

For the most part, the Middle East is where Western food goes to die.

Standard North American eats here just make me sad. Little did you know that chicken nuggets can actually get worse. Cakes aren’t sweet enough. Burger patties have weird spices and leftover lamb ligaments (fun to say) in them. Pizza sauce is actually just offbrand ketchup, and the toppings include corn and beans.

Again, these are generalizations. Tel Aviv, Cairo, Istanbul, and plenty of other huge cities will have over-priced, better-quality options.

But, really, who cares? You have access to some of the best food on the planet—eat locally! In Turkey, try iskender. Get munsaaf in Jordan.

Ask locals what they like to eat and try that. If you wanted to play it safe, you would’ve gone to Europe—dig in!

© Matt Willingham

4) Throw what you thought about modesty out the window.

At the risk of reinforcing bloated stereotypes, it’s essential to touch on the radically different definition of the word ‘modesty.’

What is and isn’t acceptable between the sexes can be tricky, and we don’t have the time to cover it all here, but it’s worth noting that the average Muslim I meet is very concerned about the deterioration of the traditional family paradigm.

If you’re wrestling with issues of dating, cohabitation, homosexuality, and the like, you may have more in common with Muslims than you thought. They may frame conversations differently, but they’re still deeply concerned over a perceived moral decline in the way we do family.

That said, in most of the Middle East there are still massive cultural differences. Think 17th century Puritans and you’re getting close to what I mean. In more conservative Iraqi cities, it’s shameful for women to show off their ankles—they’re sensual.

Our home city isn’t quite that conservative, but, even in our ‘liberal’ area, we often have to remind our Western visitors that smiling and laughing at someone of the opposite sex (who isn’t a close friend or relative) does not communicate friendliness, it generally communicates sexual interest.

The real principle at play here is sensitivity.

You’re a guest. Just because you have a return ticket doesn’t mean you’re free to act however you want, so pack clothes that make you feel unsexy and over-covered.

Research photos from your destination and see what people are wearing. It will attract people to you for the right reasons, and I promise it will serve you well.

© Matt Willingham

5) When in doubt, stick to the beaten path.

Or, put positively: if you see 5 other people doing something, you’re probably OK (unless they’re lobbing molotov cocktails at cops—I’d avoid that).

When you land, check your neo-liberal, Western upbringing at customs. Pushing your ‘rights’ into people’s faces and blazing the individuality trail will rarely serve you.

If you drive East for an hour and a half from my house, you’ll wind up at a gorgeous waterfall straddling the Iran-Iraq border. You may remember several Americans who decided to take a hike beyond the fence, and it landed them rent-free accommodations in Tehran for over two years.

There are dozens of theories about what ‘really happened’ floating around, but one travel lesson resounds: stick to the beaten path. The adventurers out there may cringe at this, but land mines, fanatical groups, and dehydration are just a few of the many good reasons to avoid trail-blazing—especially when you’re near an ethnic or international fault line.

© Matt Willingham

—

So, based on my own experiences, those are my top five tips for you. In hindsight, I wish I had considered this list before my years in Southeast Asia as these tips can be applied to most anywhere. Slowing down; being sensitive in how you relate to others, dress, and take pictures; eating locally—these are all things worth considering regardless of place.

But what did I miss? What other tips would you proffer to a traveller in the Middle East or elsewhere?

I’d love to hear from you!

Contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. According to Clinical psychologist Meg Jay in a recent TED talk, your 20s are a time to build your identity capital. That means working on yourself. And while that might seems like advice to fan the flames of your narcissism, think of it more like figuring out how to be the best you to serve the people around you.

Now say what you want about TED talks, but there’s no denying that this is helpful information. If you have 15 minutes to spare, I highly recommend the video below.

Jay Quotables

 In your 30s it’s simply harder and more stressful to do.

Whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the time to change it

20s are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options

20s are the critical period of adult development

 The defining decade: Jay’s three main points

 1. Forget about having an identity crisis and get identity capital

- Do something that adds value to who you are

-An investment of who you might want to be next

 2. The urban tribe is overrated

- 20 somethings that huddle together with like-minded peers limit who they know, what they know, how they think, how they speak, and where they work

 3. The time to start picking your family is now

-The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one, that means being as intentional with love as you are with work.

-Consciously choose who and what you want

Flickr photo (cc) by StuartWebster

Suddenly, we’re farther than I’ve ever gone before. Beyond the mind-altering sensations that follow one upon the other like stock cars on their final lap, my ears are ringing with the impact of having met this unlikeliest of all people, to whom there’s no need to explain jokes or literary references or certain secret hopes, whose nearness sets my ears ringing with an inertial mantra:

“This is it. This is it. This is it . . .”

Suddenly, I’m angry. I’m angry because I’m not sure that he’s as sure as I am. Suddenly, with sex closer than it’s ever been, sex is beside the point. I don’t care that it’s not his first time, but I want it to be his first time feeling toward someone the way I feel toward him. To act as though sex with him is just . . . whatever . . . would be a lie — a lie about the oldest, truest part of me. And it would be equally a lie to proceed as though it isn’t important to me that sex with me be important to him.

So I say, “Wait.”

I’ve wondered ever since what my life would be like now, if I hadn’t said that then.

- – -

Don’t make me wait, honey / Don’t make me say it out loud / Don’t hesitate now, honey / Or it will all fall down. (Chris Kalgren)

Those virgins who remain, floating on the periphery of modern culture like a raft full of castaways in sight of an Ibiza beach, may find themselves looking at each other and wondering, “How did we get here?” They used to be the normal ones; hell, they used to be in the social ascendancy, commanding large numbers of cattle and linen garments as bride-prices.

There are way too many factors for this article’s word count to explain how virginity went from being normative to archaic. Most of it seems directly linked to changes in popular psychology: “letting our identity be formed by our sexuality, rather than letting our identity form our sexuality,” is the apt phrase of Kirsten Rumary, part of the national staff of Living Waters Canada, a ministry that deals with relational and sexual issues. Her track record, which began with promiscuity and has since included 17 years of celibacy, gives her a position of trust that is both lofty and isolated: “I feel like the orthodox trophy [that] they wheel out, when they want that perspective.”

In this cultural climate, being possessed of your virginity is like owning a savings bond — worth keeping only until you understand its conceptual value. After that, it’s best cashed in before the exchange rate dips any lower; the harder you hold onto it, the harder it is to get rid of. Recently, a string of entrepreneurial virgins appeared, selling their virtue at auction and raising questions about the monetary worth of modern day maidenhood. Catarina Migliorini, a 20-year-old Brazilian woman whose beauty required several medical tests to prove the integrity of her offer, made nearly $800,000 off her first time (proceeds to benefit charity).

- – -

And true love waits / In haunted attics. Radiohead

Of course, any liability can be turned into an asset. There are many examples of people who, having gone as far as they could through looks and talent, leveled up by means of their virginity. Musician Rebecca St. James is better known now for the many books she has published on the strength of hers, while Tim Tebow’s raised him from noteworthy athlete with a spiritual streak to a figurehead of virtue.

While these luminaries proved that not every virgin is necessarily a mouth-breathing sexual paranoiac, it’s doubtful whether their publicity will bring chastity into vogue, any more than Heather Whitestone made deafness an enviable trait after her win at the 1995 Miss America pageant. After all, it’s likely that when Tim Tebow wants to, he’ll have less trouble than the average guy finding a nice girl to deflower him. From a cultural standpoint, the value of virginity has always consisted entirely in the opportunities it represents.

In ancient times, marrying a woman who wasn’t a virgin admitted the possibility of disease, political disturbance, and the possible late appearance of bastard children. Even as recently as the ’50s, a person’s own character was partly assessed by the virtue of their spouse, which could lead to restriction from social groups, clubs, and jobs even as lofty as the US presidency. Men might love their mistresses, but they didn’t marry them.

This made for a high value on virginity; it did not always make for good relationships. That became evident during the ’70s, when the divorce rate doubled in just 10 years, and brings us up to date, in an age where wives (and husbands) long for the relational privileges of mistresses.

After watching our parents survive loveless marriages for our sakes, or get divorced as soon as they felt we were old enough to deal with it, we are terrified of marriage. It doesn’t make us want it any less — come what cultural ebbs and flows there may, humans persist in wanting to get married — but it makes us much shyer about approaching it.

We’ve also grown up with a century’s worth of mixed messages. In one ear, the church and the conservative mainstream beg us to suppress sexual feelings until we can fully indulge them, while in the other ear, psychology says that our very identity hinges on our freedom of sexual expression (with the resounding agreement of our hormones). The only thing they agree on is characterizing sexuality as both an ultimate good and an unstable compound, against which human beings have practically no power. (Nor, as Freud argued and Kinsey echoed, should they have any.)

In light of all this, unmarried virgins are treated even by the church as accidents waiting to happen. This attitude gives us a weird culture of child-brides and fail-safe courtship on one end of the spectrum, and sexual permissiveness of extra-biblical proportions, on the other end. The watchword of both camps is “love” — both claim to be the most humanly do-able ways of showing love to someone that you’re really committed to.

Between the two extremes, there falls a broad soft middle, the growing majority of culturally relevant churches who stay on message, but avert their eyes discreetly from couples who “mess up,” “make mistakes,” and “struggle physically.” As long as mistakes are acknowledged and the couple ends up married, sexual purity is regarded as something to aim for, but not to be graded on.

- – -

Night is young, so are we. / Let’s get to know each other better, slow and easily. Jermaine Stewart

“I think we sometimes conflate institutional systems and structures, and covenant with God, to the point that we believe that signing a marriage license is God’s intention.” This from Christian Piatt, an author and blogger with Patheos and The Good Man Project.

“You can be married and use someone,” he points out. “You can devalue and denigrate someone without ever touching them. You can abuse someone sexually without ever having sex with them.”

He reviles the setting of arbitrary sexual boundaries as a means of emotional and spiritual protection in sexual relationships. “Hand jobs okay, intercourse not” is, he says, a Pharisaical reduction of the law to its letter. It preserves personal gratification, rather than reverence for the other person and their body, as the goal of a sexual relationship.

Marriage, says Mr. Piatt, is no magic pill for a righteous sexual relationship. The end of the matter, he says, is being able to say to your partner “‘I’m doing this out of love and respect and reverence for you.’”

It’s possible for a person’s virginity to impair their ability to say that to someone. One woman I interview, who requests anonymity, was engaged to a virgin whose sexual appetite took them much farther than she was comfortable going, even though she was not a virgin herself.

“He was so attracted to me, that it was like he was aroused all the time,” she says, while for her part, “my heart was bonded to him in a way that was too soon.” Even though she was more experienced than he, even though they didn’t have intercourse, the memory of it still makes her feel dirty.

“You’d think it would be different,” she says, “because we were in love.”

- – -

The world that I see inside you / Waiting to come to life / Waking me up to dreaming / Reality in your eyes Jason Wade

On these grounds, Mr. Piatt doubts that sex is meant to be a permanent consummation of a loving relationship. That idea, he says, “does presuppose that there is one man made to be with one woman, to be together for all time. I’m not sure that sharing a sexual experience with someone that you care about, or even love, devalues that experience or any future experiences simply because you aren’t sure yet whether you want to spend the rest of your life with that person.”

I ask him whether it wouldn’t be more loving, respectful, and reverential of that person to wait until you are sure.

“I don’t have a perfect answer to your question,” he says. “In a perfect world, I would love to see that happen, I guess.”

 - – -

I don’t know about you but I swear on my name they could smell it on me. / I’ve never been too good with secrets. Ben Gibbard

It’s not as easy as you might think to lose your virginity. If you want an actual human encounter, with corresponding feelings of attraction, you have to get through the strange moral barrier most people have against casual sex with a virgin. This often narrows down a first-timer’s options to an escort service or someone who really cares about them.

Because of this, some manage to slip through the cracks and remain possessed of their virtue well past drinking age. They’re commonly assumed to wear thick glasses and tightly-buttoned sweaters, and to get excited at a close brush with someone on a crowded sidewalk.

In fact, there is a whole cadre of virgins with ingenious strategic savvy who can play abstinence like a yoyo, giving out just enough and then snapping back, to mesmeric effect. It’s a marvel of technique.

There are also the “nice guys” and “great girls” about whom people wonder “How is he/she not married yet?” The question is answered when you see one of them get dumped. These are the virgins whose consciences chafe against a sense of entitlement that God (or the world, or one person in particular) should have long since rewarded their fortitude.

You’ll notice that these types are all united by a fixation on sex. Fearing it, defining it, courting it, avoiding it. It’s a lot of thought and energy spent on something that you’re committed to not having.

- – -

I am the son / And the heir / Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar. (Johnny Marr)

The most common (and perhaps most successful) objection to virginity goes along the lines of “What’s the big deal? It’s just sex.” But the objection itself reveals an implicit understanding that sex is not just sex, at all. If it’s simply a rite of physical pleasure, there’s no real need of another person’s involvement. (Indeed, if spokespeople like Louis C.K. can be believed, the DIY version can be better.)

What sex is really about was succinctly posited by God, right before He created the necessary condition for sex to occur:

“It is not good for man to be alone.”

 - – -

I can’t do it anymore / And I’m not satisfied. (Elvis Costello)

I didn’t want to write this article. Once I say what I think the Bible says about sex, then I’ll have to live with it. I can no longer leave myself open to being persuaded otherwise.

 - – -

I felt a rush like a rolling ball of thunder / Spinning my head around and taking my body under. (Bob Gaudio)

According to the Bible, sex is a physical way of binding yourself to someone. I don’t just mean the release of oxytocin, either. Sex is the integrated human being — mind, body, spirit, emotions —communicating to another integrated human being, “You are not alone. From now on, you have me.”

To be clear, this isn’t me getting poetic; I’m getting this from 1 Corinthians 6:12 through chapter 7. These verses indicate what sex is, and that it’s meant only for people who are married to each other.

There, I said it.

Accordingly, sex is largely a matter of truth between two people, and truth in sex is largely a matter of timing. Here’s what I mean:

Commitment is a strange word, a reflexive verb, where the subject makes itself the object. You commit yourself, and then you are committed. By saying you are committed to someone, you indicate that you have done something to yourself. In sexual relationships, the Bible indicates that what you must do to yourself is make another person your owner. (That’s 1 Corinthians 7:4.)

If you’re putting off marriage until you finish your school, or get your finances in order, or decide whether you’re really compatible, then you’re more obligated to those things than you are to the person you love. There’s no shame in that. But under these circumstances, having sex with someone is a lie.

It’s lying to the other person about himself (or herself), telling them they have you fully, when actually they don’t. It’s lying to yourself, that you’re committed to them, when actually you aren’t. It’s lying to both yourself and the other person about God, that He didn’t mean what He said through the Scripture about sex, or that He doesn’t know what you really need right now.

- – -

Now if that’s your secret, you can keep it to yourself /
‘Cause if you tell me, I might tell somebody else.

(Big Joe Turner)

When I admit to others that I’m saving my first time for marriage (as of this printing), I can see the distance widen between us. From that moment forward, they’re either looking down on me as a pitiful case of sexual repression, or looking up to me like Dante’s Beatrice. I’m not interested in either position; both make me feel helplessly alone.

This is why I find virginity auctioneers to be only as culpable as the well-meaning church folks who hustle horny teenagers toward the altar. Virgins are not martyrs; they’re just another group of people who, by choice, aren’t having sex right now. They deserve less pity than people whose spouses are chronically ill, or deployed overseas, or exhausted from working two jobs in order to provide for their families.

If it’s true that God’s goodness includes giving us good things at the right time, then there must be a way that virginity right now is not just a holding cell, but a form of active blessing on my life.

I’m talking about finding a better reason for my virginity than the promise of better sex within marriage. I’m talking about a better reason for getting married than relief for my sex drive.

Like so many virgins, I’m tired of waiting for my life to finally begin. My need for intimacy exceeds my patience for a boyfriend to come along and love me, or the church to properly support me. The only recourse is this thing I’ve hardly asked God for — intimacy with Him.

. . . And I confess to being uneasy with that.

I can’t imagine what that feels like.

 . . . Our meeting will mean something only when you wish it. So, I’ll wait. (Letter from Simone Beauvoir to Nelson Algren, 1950)

❋ ❋ ❋

Converge modified Flickr images by  Kalexanderson, kraybon, aftab.,

We are always getting ready to live but never living. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Instead of saying goodbye, Zach Sobiech, a teen diagnosed with terminal cancer, decided to sing a goodbye to all those he loved. In the process he became an internet sensation with his viral video Clouds. Zach died today at the age of 18, but before he passed, he gave us an important lesson on living life to the fullest.

Watch his story and be prepared for waterworks:

Flickr photo (cc) by LaPrimaDonna

Last year, at age 27, I had my first real, healthy dating relationship begin and end in the span of six months. I think I experienced real love, and when it ended, felt hurt like never before, and was a bitter mess for months. I learned a lot about myself and relationships during that time. Through the process of finding and losing love — in no particular order — here are some points of wisdom I gained from my first love:

1. You can’t be cool all the time

Sure, you need to be cool at the start. You can’t be dorky and awkward right off the bat. But after a while, you gotta fly your true colours and sing the Mulan soundtrack at the top of your lungs in a silly voice just because sometimes that’s just who you are.

2. Love is not a movie

Just because you’re wearing nice clothes and put the perfect song on and kiss doesn’t mean the credits roll and perfection is reached. You still have to say goodbye, and drive home, and wonder what she meant when she said “I never pictured myself with someone like you” and then worry desperately about whether she’s ‘the one’ until the sun comes up.

3. Beware of someone who’s never dated before

You know all those mistakes we made and lessons you learned from dating in high school or summer camp? It’s nice to find someone who knows what she wants because she’s figured out from a few bad dates/boyfriends what she doesn’t want, and doesn’t expect perfection.

4. Don’t take love for granted

It’s actually quite easy to start thinking about your significant other as just a good friend that you occasionally make out with. But that’s not love. Love is something very special: however, truly appreciating a loving relationship while you’re in it may be impossible until you’ve loved and lost and been fortunate enough to find it again. Remember that it could be over at any moment, so treasure it!! Treasure iiitt!! (said in Homer Simpson’s trademark threatening tone.)

5. Love demands growth

Your job is to help the other person grow. If you aren’t even more in love with who she is becoming, and should become, and wants to become, than who she is right now, and you aren’t willing to give everything to see her reach her potential, then walk away. And if you aren’t willing to grow into the sort of person who is worthy of her, walk away. And if she isn’t willing to do the same… you know.

6. Schedule your time

You will resent yourself for not getting anything done later. Remember that just because investing in this relationship is so much fun, doesn’t mean you should stop investing in yourself.

7. Remember your friends

They’re the ones whose shoulders you’ll be crying on later, so don’t abandon them completely. Also, they often have good advice to give, and can see things about your relationship that you may be blind to. Ask them to be honest with you, and trust them. You’ll thank them later.

8. There will be doubts

Other people don’t magically disappear while you’re with her. Just remember how awesome she is, and that those other girls would probably turn into clingy and boring emotional leeches pretty quickly.

9. It’s a learning experience

Ask for grace, and give it. Be honest about your needs and what you value in life. Weigh her needs and values against yours, and if she’s worth it, work hard to make up the difference.

10. Know your ‘must-have’s –– and let the rest slide

Choose five or six features that are a must, and let the rest go. If you have a list a mile long, and she doesn’t meet requirement 43 — “Must be able to name all Radiohead albums in sequential order either by date or importance” — remember that you probably don’t check everything on her list either.

11. It takes work

Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to, or spend time with family members you don’t really like, or go to events you don’t want to. Go, and be the best version of yourself you can, because it matters what the people who are closest to her think of you. When it’s just the two of you, don’t just sit there and talk about the latest Parks and Rec episode. Get to know her hopes and dreams, what she values most, and see if you’re ready to put in the work to make those dreams come true and become the person she’s always wanted.

12. If it’s not right, walk away

Sometimes you have to lose love to realize you had it. Sometimes you realize love is not for you, as in, you can be totally in love with a person who is not right for you. How do you know if someone is right for you? If you know the person you want to become, and that person just naturally seems to push you in that direction.

13. Love makes you desperate…

…So desperate to hold onto it, that you’d trade all of your dreams, everything you’ve worked for, your friends and family and God. You’d trade it all, just to have it back. This is not healthy. Love can be good, but it can also deprive you of everything you are, so I guess it can also not be good.

14. No, love does not equal engagement

Timing is everything. You’re not ready until you know you’re ready.

15. Break-ups suck

There is perhaps no worse feeling than being rejected by someone you love. At least it gives you a chance to press reset on your life, your other relationships, and your walk with God. One day those lessons you learned and pain you went through will contribute to a greater, deeper happiness with someone else. At least, that’s what everybody says. I guess I’ll find out someday.

(sniffle)

Well that’s my list. What’s yours?

Write out your lessons learned about love in a comment and maybe we’ll publish it on the site! Or email them to me at sam@convergemagazine.com

Flickr photo (cc) by hallomarvin

I have never been to an atheist church, but I can imagine that I would have a good time. Their services seem upbeat and positive, and they are full of songs, socializing, and more often than not, comedy.

For me, the most interesting part about these atheist churches is not the irony or contradiction of having an “atheist church” – which most atheists reject – the most interesting part is the fact that the most vocal proponents of these churches are not scientists or philosophers as we have come to expect, they are comedians.

Take, for example, The Sunday Assembly in London, England. This is an atheist church that was started by two comedians, Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones, who were looking for a place where like-minded people (ie. atheists) could gather together to learn how to “help often, live better and wonder more,” according to the church’s central tenets.

It makes sense that comedians would be at the forefront of any social gathering. Comedians are great orators who are comfortable in front of a crowd and trained to keep people’s attention. But, that does not answer the question why comedians are at the forefront of an atheist social gathering, and why so many famous comedians – including George Carlin, Tim Minchin, Ricky Gervais, Patton Oswalt, Seth McFarlane, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Larry David – are unabashedly atheistic. Does comedy lend itself to atheism, or atheism to comedy?

I think the answer is a little bit of both. The job of a comedian is to make light of our unconscious habits and irrational beliefs in order to shake us out of our mundane or irrational conventions. They are able to do this because they often employ a radical skepticism to everything in life. This radical skepticism allows them to openly question everything and analyze anything in life without boundary – nothing is sacred, including God and religion. Comedians serve the Socratic function of making us ask ‘why this instead of that?’ Most of the time we don’t have a good answer to this question and it is for this reason that comedians make it their business to ask this exact question.

By asking the simple question ‘why’, comedians bring to light and at the same time make light of humanity’s idiosyncrasies, which is essentially what comedy is: poking fun at of the incongruities of life. When something violates or is incongruous with our expectations of what should be the case, we either find it confusing, offensive, or funny, and sometimes all three.

Let me give one quick example to show how the incongruity of life works itself out in the practice of comedy. The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant illustrates the incongruity of humour with this story:

An Indian at the table of an Englishman in Surat, when he saw a bottle of ale opened and all the beer turned into froth and overflowing, testified his great astonishment with many exclamations. When the Englishman asked him, ‘What is there in this to astonish you so much?’ he answered, ‘I am not at all astonished that it should flow out, but I do wonder how you ever got it in.’

This story is humorous, Kant says, “not because we deem ourselves cleverer than this ignorant man, or because of anything in it that we note as satisfactory to the understanding, but because our expectation was strained (for a time) and then was suddenly dissipated into nothing.” In other words, the story was humorous because the ending was incongruous with the beginning and was able to make light of our initial expectations by dissipating the tension into nothing.

Now, I think a more recent example will help to reveal why this idea of comedic incongruity is often closely tied to atheism. Woody Allen, the ever-witty writer-director, once said, “Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends.” Here, Woody Allen is playing on the idea that when you need God the most, he is nowhere to be found – like a plumber on the weekends. The idea of not receiving help from God in a time of crisis is not particularly funny, but whenever that idea is unexpectedly coupled with an absentee plumber, it becomes quite funny. But it also becomes more than that; it becomes a polemic against the very idea of God. If we think that it is absurd not to be able to get a plumber on the weekend in a time of crisis, then we are encouraged to think it is equally absurd to believe in a God who does not show up in a time of crisis. The consequence of the joke is obvious: God, like the absentee plumber, becomes incongruous with practical solutions to real life problems. God becomes an absurd and impractical idea that, to use the words of Immanuel Kant, dissipates into nothing.

Thus, it is easy to see how comedy lends itself to atheism. If one does even a cursory exploration into human life they will easily find many things about our understanding of God and religion that appear to be incongruous. To believe that we are able to talk to and receive help from an invisible being in the sky is too much for many people to believe; especially when they have never seen or touched this God for themselves.

However, in addition to comedy lending itself to atheism, atheism also lends itself to comedy. Comedy is often used as a tool of atheism to ridicule or scorn people who believe incongruous things when they apparently should not. Richard Dawkins, for example, told Michael Schulman in a New Yorker article on the comedian-songwriter-atheist Tim Minchin, “He does ridicule very well, and ridicule is one of the weapons that we need to use against soft headedness.” Now, even though ridicule may be morally reprehensible (René Descartes, for example, calls scorn a form of hatred), I don’t want to be too hard on Dawkins because we all do it in varying degrees. I mean, who doesn’t love a good joke about Scientology?

The point is that comedy is often used as an evangelistic tool for atheists to point out the incongruities of religion and God. But, the question remains, is Christianity really incongruous with reality? As a Christian, I want to humbly argue that Christianity is far from incongruous. I see Christianity – Jesus to be more specific – as the key that unlocks the true meaning of reality. However, I do not think that comedians and atheists are bothered by Christianity because it is incongruous with reality, I think they are bothered by Christianity because it is incongruous with our expectations of reality.

Humanity could not have predicted Christianity. Christianity isn’t illogical, but it also isn’t what you would expect. There is nothing necessary about God creating or coming into the world. It was all an act of will, an act of love. To a world that expects the logical outworking of natural laws instead of personal agency, this religion of Christianity is no doubt absurd.

In his well-known book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton argues this very point. He says that Christianity is inherently paradoxical and at odds with our expectation of reality. The opening lines to the chapter “The Paradoxes of Christianity” read:

“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.”

Comedians and atheists are some of the best logicians in the world, but it is this logic that becomes a hindrance to the atheist accepting the paradoxical truth of Christianity. For all its logical consistency, atheism is logically inconsistent when it comes to the person of Jesus. There is no natural category for someone like Jesus. Jesus is logically incongruous with our expectations of reality. And herein lies the difference between the Christian and the atheist: one accepts the possibility of a logically incongruous truth and the other does not.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell is shown in a courtroom artist sketch during his sentencing (CNS/Reuters)

Abortion Doctor Kermit Gosnell Guilty of First-Degree Murder

Pennsylvania doctor Kermit Gosnell was found guilty on 3 counts of first-degree murder – killing babies ex utero after unsuccessful abortions – and 1 count of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the late-term abortions his medical practice conducted. Media coverage of Gosnell’s trial was rather small, but the verdict has enlivened the ever-present debate about abortion and human rights. At The Daily Beast for example, Michelle Goldberg argues that the issue should not be about abortion, but about illegal or late-term abortion. The problem, she says, is that “[w]hen you restrict abortion, this is what happens. Gosnell is what happens.” What we need, Goldberg asserts, is more access to abortions so that women do not become desperate and do not look for doctors like Gosnell who perform sketchy operations.

In contrast, Matthew Franck at Public Discourse argues that the horrible actions of Kermit Gosnell are not an aberration as Michelle Goldberg claims, rather they are a:

“[L]ogical extension of these groups’ moral reasoning and public policy goals, which they have advocated for decades. They have devoted themselves to teaching American women that their unborn children simply don’t count in any moral calculus, and horrors like Gosnell’s clinic are the fruit of their diligent work.”

Goldberg’s assessment of the abortion situation is at the same time predictable and unsettling. It is predictable because it is not surprising that people turn to unsavory methods when they are desperate, and it is unsettling because we allow desperate people to think that abortion is the only way out. We have arrived at this unsettling place because those on the extreme-left have taken an overly practical me-first approach that prevents us from taking responsibility for our actions. I don’t mean to overly simplify the issue of abortion here, I just mean to emphasize that mothers should not feel alone when they are expecting a newborn baby. Perhaps communities should think about shouldering more of the burden so that mothers don’t think the only practical way to deal with an unwanted baby is to abort it.

Nature vs. Nurture vs. Chance

What is more important in determining who we become: Nature or nurture, our genes or our environment? Well, it appears new research is beginning to break down this dichotomy and turning it into a trichotomy. Gary Marcus reports on a new study which shows that mice with identical genomes and identical living conditions often end up with very different lives. The reason? The chance events that we experience shape our memory and future decisions more than we realize. As Marcus put it, small differences in experience, desire, or talent “become magnified over time.” Interestingly, National Geographic’s recent cover story was on human longevity and why some people live longer than others. Giuseppe Passarino, the featured geneticist in the story who is at the University of Calabria in Italy, said:

“It’s not that there are good genes and bad genes. It’s certain genes at certain times. And in the end, genes probably account for only 25 percent of longevity. It’s the environment too, but that doesn’t explain all of it either. And don’t forget chance.”

Dallas Willard (1935-2013)

I was extremely saddened to learn this week that Dallas Willard died on May 8 at the age of 77 to pancreatic cancer. Yes, May 8^th was last week, but I was away so I am including Dr. Willard here. Willard was both an academic of the highest order and a spiritual father of the most humble order. His influence on the evangelical landscape in the last 30 years should not be understated. For example, I, like John Ortberg, was forever changed when I first read Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines in my early 20s. It opened my eyes to the reality and the importance of the spiritual life. I still consider myself rather helpless at the spiritual life, but I get encouragement from knowing that people like Willard found joy and strength from living a “with-God life.” But Willard did not live “with-God” from a position of privilege as Ortberg helpfully points out:

“Because Dallas wrote on spiritual formation and taught philosophy at the University of Southern California, one might think he came from a background associated with richness of education and culture and resources. In fact, he grew up in very poor circumstances in rural Missouri. His mother died when he was two; her last words to her husband were: ‘Keep eternity before the children.’”

Dallas Willard kept eternity before himself and before the multitude who have read his books, and I suspect he will continue to do so long after he himself has entered into eternity.

Other News:

• Canadians are becoming less religious, with one in four Canadians declaring that they have no religious affiliation.
• The infamous Star Wars Kid is speaking out against cyber-bullying. His message: “You’ll survive. You’ll get through it. And you’re not alone. You are surrounded by people who love you.”
• R.A. Dickey, the outspoken evangelical and knuckle-ball pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jay’s who was recently profiled by The New Yorker, received an honorary doctorate from Wycliffe College, University of Toronto’s Anglican college.
• Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in three north-eastern states after a series of deadly attacks by Islamist militant groups, whose name mean “Western education is forbidden.”

Then, a few years ago, things got weird.

I’m past the point where I’m stressed about it; I’m just kind of enjoying watching it play out.

In 2005, Josh and Jordan started making silly comic videos with a handycam. Before the videos could be posted online, Google Video demanded an account name; BlimeyCow appeared, as if by magic.

“Brain fart is a great way of putting it,” Josh concedes.

BlimeyCow videos skewer the idiosyncrasies of conservative evangelical culture, church, family…but unlike other comedy on these subjects, the laughs come from people who have remained inside that culture, rather than shucked it off for something more sophisticated. This makes their comedy not only sharply observant, but also endearing.

Things fizzled a little bit after Josh got married and Jordan started college. But two years ago, they committed to putting out a new video every week, and Messy Mondays was born. There was, Josh says, a “nicer camera” in play, and YouTube was the platform of choice. Subjects like “3 Types of Churches,” “10 Ways to Get a Girl to Like You” and “The Truth About Youth Group” brought in 3000 views per video, per week.

That was cool. That was a lot more than we were used to. It was cool to know there were people we didn’t know that were watching our stuff.

Then I had the idea. ‘We were homeschooled–let’s do one that’s about misconceptions about homeschoolers.’

I think we got a million views that month.

Previously, in response to the fans that kept asking “Why aren’t you guys famous yet?”, Josh had written on BlimeyCow’s blog that their humor would be popular only with a certain kind of audience–conservative evangelical lifers who appreciated the chance to laugh at themselves. That audience, he speculated, wasn’t likely to be very big.

“Two weeks later, we do that homeschool video and it blows up, based on that one group I said wasn’t there.

“So I had to sit back and assess. If this is a group of people that is looking for content on the internet, then we’re going to be a thing. I know this crowd; I can speak to this crowd.”

To Josh, homeschooling is a form of intellectual anarchy. At least, it can be. The problems (and the stereotypes) arise when homeschooling parents become just as doctrinarian as the public school system.

Of course, those rigid conservative stereotypes are exactly what make the homeschooling paradigm funny, even to the people inside it. But like most people who are used to being laughed at, homeschoolers need to know they’re being laughed with, in order to laugh themselves.

“I’d be remiss not to admit that a lot of those Christian cliches are justified. When we make jokes in our videos about homeschoolers it’s like ‘Haha, we’re not like that.’ Then get quiet and say ‘Well, we kind of are.’”

“You can get away with saying things sarcastically that you couldn’t any other way. There’s this hiphop artist named Propaganda–he said that the only time people are being honest is when they’re being sarcastic.”

In order to produce quality laughs that he’s included in, Josh says, it’s easy to fall into another stereotype–the hopelessly depressed stand-up comic. clown. “I understand that now,” he admits. “To write comedy, you have to be painfully self-aware. You look at the world around you, and you see every flaw.

“A lot of times, I’ll be struggling with something, and I’ll think ‘Why does this bother me?’ I’ll write it out–this root emotion, this thing I deal with–then I can make fun of myself.”

Josh talks to me in a room that appears to be a DIY control room for some kind of off-the-grid science experiment…or else simply the library of an active churchgoing family. Swiveling back and forth in his desk chair, looking to various corners of the room in search of words and phrases, he talks a mile a minute, leading me to wonder if I’m wasting his time. But he emails me later to say he enjoyed our chat, leading me to believe that maybe he just really thinks that fast.

It’s probably essential, since he parcels out his week between his day job and writing scripts, in between family, church, blogging, and brainstorming ideas for the show with youth group kids. Over the weekend, the BlimeyCow crew–Jordan, Josh, Josh’s wife Kelli, and whatever extra friends or celebrities they might rope in–spends five to seven hours shooting, and another twelve hours editing, in order to have the video ready to post on Monday.

It might sound like his schedule doesn’t leave much time for self-doubt, but he’s quick to say, “I definitely make time for that.” People often write in to suggest that they cover various kinds of topics, or incorporate different kinds of technology. “I would love to,” he says, “but I don’t have time to learn how to do that stuff.” For that reason, the show remains rudimentary–a black background, a few fright wigs, a lot of quick cuts. It’s like watching a play in a black-box theatre–the audience has to imagine everything.

The reason I get discouraged is the very thing I get encouragement from: our show isn’t very cool, but people are watching it.

There isn’t much to our show, other than the writing and that Jordan is a funny personality…according to what people have said. I don’t buy that he’s funny, but people come back.

The homeschool video catapulted BlimeyCow to a level of popularity that neither Josh nor Jordan expected. Recently, they’ve been approached by a number of managers who want to help them become the next big thing. It can be anxiety-inducing, Josh says.

“A few months ago, I had a meeting with a fella downtown, who does management marketing kind of stuff. He spoke one of my worst fears out loud: ‘You have this thing that’s very popular right now, and it’s going to disappear if you don’t capitalize on it soon.’

“For them, the bottom line is to make money. Our bottom line is that we enjoy making videos. If people enjoy this, it would be nice to just do this, and not have to worry about making time for the things”–full-time jobs, that is–”that make it so we can do this.”

Still, these conversations can make him afraid that he’s wasting an opportunity. But as more offers of this nature materialize, and more people write in to say how much they love the show, he’s realized that letting the thing evolve naturally is fine.

“It’s mostly just getting over that fear–a fear I have in my life, in general–that I’m not doing enough, that I should be doing more.” At this point, he acknowledges that he feels stretched a little thin. “But I’ve stretched myself thin in a way that I’m comfortable doing. God’s taken care of everything so far, I haven’t screwed everything up too much. He’s going to keep taking care of us, and work everything out.”

Blimey Cow’s recent Kickstarter campaign brought in 1000% of their funding goal. And that is not a joke.

It’s cool to know you’re in the middle of what you’re going to tell your kids about.

—

Banning Liebscher at a Jesus Culture conference

This July, Jesus Culture — a worship driven ministry that is gaining a reputation as sort of the Hillsongs of America — is putting on a conference in LA. We got to chat with Jesus Culture director Banning Liebscher about the origins of JC, the conference, and what it means to be a “revivalist”

Tell us about yourself, Banning:

Hi! Well my title is director, and I’m the founder of Jesus Culture. I was a youth pastor at Bethel (a church located in Redding, California) in ’97, and in ’99 we had our first youth conference, and called it Jesus Culture … the band came out of what we were doing there. So Chris Quilala was with us when he was like 14, and he’s 30 now. And Kim, she’s 31, she’s been with us since 18. We had a youth group, did the youth conferences, and from those conferences we were experiencing incredible moments of worship. So in 2005 we said, “let’s just record an album, so other people can experience what we’re experiencing.” So that started taking off, then it got on Youtube and ‘How He Loves’ blew up, then we started taking conferences out, and working with leaders, and so on

A lot of people are familiar with the music of JC, but what is there to it besides the music?

Well Jesus Culture is a ministry: it consists of lots of different parts, though music is the most well known. But we’re doing conferences and events, and you’ll never see the JC band apart from the message. When we’re on this tour, I’m preaching, we’re doing ministry, they’re doing worship … ultimately the band is part of a bigger movement who’s heart is to raise up  revivalists in the nations and leaders to transform the nations.

What of this rumor you might be leaving Bethel to start a church in Sacramento?

Yea, Bethel is going to send us to plant a church and move JC headquarters to Sacramento, and plant a church there in 2014. I’ll be the pastor, and the (worship) team is going too. We felt like the Lord wanted us to have a local expression of what’s on our heart nationally and internationally… Our heart is to serve the local church and see cities impacted… to build a local community about what God’s shown us.

Tell us a little about the upcoming conference in LA

Our conferences are about raising up revivalists. We use the word revivalist, a word that has lots of different meanings in different circles, but our heart is to raise up a generation that’s fully awakened to the love of God, that’s encountered the power of God, that’s given themselves fully to the cause of Christ on the earth.  To see nations transformed, cities saved, campuses impacted. So the conferences have been the heart and soul of who we are, where we can come together for three days and seek the Lord and be trained and equipped in the supernatural, in leadership … so we went to LA last year, and had a really incredible time, seeing some of the signs and wonders that happened, the worship times … we just have a really big heart to see young adults come in, encounter God and be sent back to their cities and campuses to see impact happen.

Some people might wonder how you would compare JC to Hillsong?

The call and mandate on Hillsong is to write songs, but we mostly do covers … people ask us why we mostly do covers, and we answer because that’s the song we’re encountering the Lord in.  Those are the songs that are touching us as a group and conference, and that’s our main goal: to encounter the Lord. There’s been a lot of pressure from people saying, now that you’re at the level you are, you gotta not do covers, but I think whatever we encounter the Lord in, that’s all I want people to do. If it’s through our song, or somebody else’s song, whatever helps people’s hearts to be lifted up.

JC also does schools and training — what options are available for young people?

The first thing we have is a worship school, during the summer, which is a short term thing, a really great experience. Everything else is more like nine months. We have the School of Ministry, where you can do one or two or even three years, where you do lots of classroom stuff. It’s a pretty profound experience, and we have people from all over the world coming in. If you can’t make it to Bethel (for that long), you can come for week long, periodic schools that are happening all year long, there’s schools on everything. There’s also the Leadership development program as well.

What would you say to someone who’s gone to events like these before, and felt like the impact doesn’t last very long?

Well you gotta be about the long term. If you come to one of our events, and it doesn’t ignite within you a passion to get to the secret place, and a passion to get in the word, then I don’t feel like I’ve done my job. So on one level, I feel like my job is just to get you to Jesus.

The gold that everyone in Hollywood was looking to find was story.

© Flickriver

The way that you arrive in New York City expecting to be mugged, or in Bogota expecting to be kidnapped and held for ransom, I arrive in Los Angeles fully prepared to feel inferior. That’s why the stories I’ve heard of people (from Lana Turner to that guy you went to high school with) leaving their Middle West origins to stand in the unending sunlight and get discovered, always baffle me.

Don’t they realize, I wonder, that everyone in Los Angeles is just like them? For pete’s sake, I want to tell them, stay in your hometown, where people regard you as an original.

Bobette Buster–besides having the greatest name you can find outside of a 1930s comic strip–is a professor at USC, a consultant to many major movie studios, and apparently a regular at Q conferences. She deals in the buzzword I currently dread the most. You know the one…

Storytelling.

In fact, Ms. Buster’s talk was the kickoff for Q Los Angeles conference–a discourse on the art of storytelling. Gag.

I mean, not really…truth be told, I want to learn the art of storytelling as much as the next poor creative slob.

But I don’t want to learn it like all these other people. I want to be the One. With integrity. With originality.

The first thing you learn when you come here is to be your best

To my relief, Ms. Buster didn’t use her fifteen minutes to expound the moral importance of Story (no “broomstick” mentions here).

Instead, she taught about story by telling a story.

The story she told was about Los Angeles.

I should mention that despite my fear and loathing of Los Angeles, I’m also fascinated by it. Apart from its jaded attitude…or maybe because of it, who knows?…it’s a beautiful place. No matter how many monstrosities of modern architecture they build, the city retains this 1950s glamor. Even in broad daylight, the place looks noir. Cruising past the palatial Deco hotels and the Spanish Revival bungalows, you can as easily imagine a housewife in a perky little apron serving Ovaltine to her husband, as you can a couple of gangsters beating to death some poor sap in suspenders while some Marcel-waved dame looks on in horror.

I can, anyway.

If New York looks like endless money, Los Angeles looks like eternal youth. There’s something both glorious and sinister about that. Equally glorious and sinister is the tale Ms. Buster told–of Samuel Goldwyn and Walt Disney and Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, but it’s all one tale–of a guy who came out to make some money the way so many other people were making money, got boxed out by the moguls, bounced back with a whole new way to do it, and ended up in company with those who had originally opposed him.

As we all know, new cinematic empires were born from the innovations of these scrappy, indomitable men. What’s odd…or glorious and sinister, if you like…is that the vibe that overshadows Los Angeles isn’t creative innovation, but a brooding oligarchy of financial empires.

If that sounds dramatic, remember it’s L.A. we’re talking about. Their economy runs on drama. In the midst of all its beautiful people and idyllic places, when a silence falls, you can sense the low thrumming of industry. You realize that this isn’t beauty for its own sake; this is beauty for profit.

But they still tell stories. And, perhaps more importantly, they set the stage for new innovators to show up and buck the system.

© Yesterland.com

I’m not sure this is what Ms. Buster was getting at, in her lecture. (If you want to hear a slightly different version of it, you can download it here.) But this is what I heard:

Originality for its own sake is just as much a tail-chasing enterprise as chasing after money or fame. It doesn’t matter if you’re the only one who can do what you do. What matters is that you are here to do it. It might be in service of something way bigger and more important than you…if such a thing can be imagined.

Because people were demanding stories, they got better.