Author Archives: Dave

I was watching this guy play Pac Man tonight. Yes, Pac Man. The little yellow guy who tried to munch all of the pellets in the maze before the ghosts got him. He had four power pellets in the maze, and after eating one he had to many seconds that he had the power to eat the ghosts for extra points…you remember.

Okay, I’m dating myself by writing this…

Anyway, it was one of those little joystick games that you plug into the television and it has like four classic video games from back in the day.

I remember the debut of video games. I remember my parents playing pong in the living room. I remember once I accidentally hit the reset switch while they were playing, and they were a little ticked off…

I remember being hooked on Frogger, and Space Invaders, and River Raid, and, of course, Pac Man. It’s funny….as a technology enthusiast (you say nerd, I say enthusiast), I’ve always told my friends that I was never much of a gamer. But thinking back on it, I suppose I was. I remember there being (at some point) a Pac Man cartoon. I remember the animated characters being in this fairy tale land of suburbia that was always bright and happy. I was blessed with a loving family that was very close, and so life was, for me, just as bright and happy at that time. I hadn’t a care in the world. In a word, there was innocence.

I have a friend who’s a hard core gamer. He had a PSP and the X-Box 360 within hours of them coming on the market…hard core. Spends money on his gaming like some people do cars. Its his major hobby. But I’ll be honest, I look at a lot of the games today, and I just don’t get it. I’ll admit, I had a momentary addiction to Halo, but overall, the games just seem…well, they just seem different than they were in my childhood.

In a word, violent.

Ironically, so is our society. America as a culture has grown more and more violent every year. Years after my Pac Man addiction, when I reached high school, I worried about what to wear to school that day and whether I had a date that weekend, not about the potential of being shot. We didn’t have to carry clear bookbags. We didn’t walk through metal detectors. I don’t envy those in our public school system today. Our children should never, ever have to worry about those things.

And I see very violent video games today (True Crime, Streets of L.A., for example). Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great video games also (my friends were also spending a good deal of time with Tiger Woods Golf on the 360 tonight). But many, many games that are much, much more violent.

I think video games are artistic expressions. I don’t buy into the garbage that life imitates art for a second. As I’ve said before, I think artists see the troubles in our society before anyone else. And they express it. Different artists in different ways. But what some artists do with video games is just as valid as any Picasso, its just a different genre. These games, as with many other art forms, are imitating life. Perhaps we should take a good look, especially those of us who are sheltered from life on the street, and ponder the lifestyle and digression that these games are portraying. Because they are what our children face every day. They are what many adults face every day. They are a cruel reality that has been painted on the screen for all to see.

Our innocence has been lost, but perhaps, just perhaps, we could still reclaim a bit of it if we really tried. You think?

Long live Pac Man.

Have you ever been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art?

The architecture itself is stunning. The view from the front of the steps into downtown Philly is breathtaking, especially at night (I’m fascinated by city skylines at night). Wonderful masterpieces are contained therein. But, of course, what most people think of when they go the Philadelphia Museum of Art is…”the Rocky steps.”

For those of you who haven’t made the connection, the steps in front of the Philly Museum of Art was the filming sight for the climactic Rocky scene where Stallone runs up the steps with “Eye of the Tiger” playing triumphantly in the background. Countless visitors duplicate this every year. It’s one of those things that, if you haven’t done, you’ve just missed out. I did it last summer. It was a blast. You feel as though you’ve experienced a bit of Americana.

Today, the Rocky statue was taken back to the museum to be displayed. There has been a significant amount of controversy about this. Today, a professor from a local university was quoted as saying that the Rocky statue isn’t art. The debate is just that: is the statue art, or is it pop culture?

My question is, why can’t it be both?

Visual art is something that transports you into a different realm of consciousness, a realm that you couldn’t have acheived otherwise. Anyone who has been truly transported by a painting or sculpture can understand what I’m saying. The thing is that, the piece that transports you may leave me grounded. Likewise, what moves me beyond myself may leave you scratching your head. All art forms are relative. I know that drives social-science types crazy, but it just is. It means different things to different people. That’s part of what makes it art, be it visual, performance, written, musical…what a performance or a poem or a painting says to me, it may not say to you. It’s an individualized experience…as individual as a fingerprint. God made it that way.

Artists tend to reflect what is going on around them. They see the layers to a society that others don’t. They’re deep thinkers…it’s in their nature. Artists are the first to realize the dangers of societal trends, years, even decades before anyone else does. They see layers to our civilization, our culture, and reflect it in their work. Art must have culture to survive. Likewise, culture must have art to survive. It’s a symbiotic relationship. To attempt to separate the two like this…I just don’t get it.

Pop culture is still culture. In fact, it’s usually a more accurate deptiction of our culture than is academia and high society. The Rocky statue is a cultural icon. It is American heritage. It takes us back to where-ever, or whatever, we were experiencing when we saw the film. Incidentally, the film was a piece of art also. One work of art reflecting another, and reflecting culture simultaneously…sounds deep to me, perhaps even profound in its own little way. The Rocky statue is certainly art. And it is being moved back to where it belongs…the museum. Let people appreciate it there. Perhaps those who wouldn’t be inclined to enter the museum will appreciate this artwork in it’s plaza, and appreciate it. They will experience something they may not otherwise have experienced.

And, as with any encounter with art, they will be better, if even in a minute way, for it.

It seems like the past couple of posts I’ve written here have been focused toward the Christian subculture is some way or another. Not really where I want to keep focusing my thoughts, because I don’t want to sound like I’m in a bubble, but this really gets my attention.

Since I’ve lived in the Bible Belt (for those unfamiliar with, it’s a group of southern states in which religion is as common as football), I have been amazed at how politics play into the Christian faith. You can always tell the people here who claim to be Believers because of two (very corny and disgusting) things: that stupid fish on the backs of their cars, and bumper stickers that read something along to lines of “Bush for President” or “I voted for Bush” or something equally invoking of rolling your eyes.

In fact, there seems to be this underlying thought process that, if you’re not Republican and you don’t support George W. Bush, then you’re not a Believer, or at least not a practicing one. Guess that rules me out. I’m not advocating that Believers isolate themselves from politics, because that would make us irresponsible citizens. But the fact that my opinion diverges from yours politically doesn’t make either of us more or less of a person of faith.

I think it’s a microcosm of a larger problem, however, and that is the problem of how faith and creative thinking seem to be ostracized from each other. In my experience, especially in this geographic location, having faith means that you have to act, talk, and walk a certain way. It means that there’s a box you have to fit into, with out deviation. It means that independent thinking is absolutely not permitted…only blind acceptance of what a man in a suit with a Bible and an axe to grind tells you. This leads those who are of a more creative bent to struggle. We are sent the message that we cannot reconcile being an artist with being a Christian…we should choose one or the other. And many flee the faith because of it, because God hard-wired them to be artists, but they’re told that they can’t be.

And still others are treated as lepers because they hold a different political view.

It is so critical that Believers re-prioritize. God made many different people, with different personalities and gifts. He wants us to be different, to be ourselves. Why in the world would anyone want to be part of a religion that doesn’t allow them to be themselves, but demands that they be something…someone…that they’re just not? Certainly, there is an internal change that transpires in a Believer, but that doesn’t involve placing that person into a mold, or programming them to look, act, and talk a specific way.

The issue is that Christianity was never meant to be a religion, it was meant to be a faith. God created spirituality, and man perverted it into religion. Spirituality is different than that…it is real, it’s not about a long list of rules, it’s not about magic words and rituals and traditions. It’s about talking to Him, knowing Him, believing Him. Just believing.

But religion has dominated our mindsets and poisoned our churches with the desire to gain status and acquire prestige. C.S. Lewis makes interesting comments on this in “The Screwtape Letters.” He feels that this type of mindset is the thing that demons enjoy. Demons love politics.

Does that mean that God hates politics? Perhaps God hates religion, too.

Now there’s a thought.

It was Warren Jeff’s body language, that of a nervous man with something to hide, that raised suspicion in a Nevada State Trooper Monday night, leading to a search of his vehicle, a positive identification of the fugitive polygamist, and his arrest. A routine traffic stop finally put an end to his flight…like we’ve never heard that story before.

I couldn’t be happier that this guy is now where he belongs. Utah will be prosecuting first, although I understand there is a long line of states who are waiting. It’s the backstory, though, that really wrenches at my gut.

Jeffs was a tyrant. He ruled a reclusive sect of fundamentalists, teaching them that he held the key to their eternal salvation, and that they were to follow his guidelines on whom they should marry and when. I understand that each man had to have three wives in order to reach Heaven. Girls had to marry at whatever age he decided. If anyone refused these terms, he simply with-held their marriages, and, therefore, their salvation. Very similar to the history of the Roman Catholic Church, who with-held the sacraments from kings (and, in the belief system of the time, thereby with-held salvation from the king) in order to bend the political structure to their will. It’s the same perversion on a smaller scale. Somewhere, at some point in this guy’s delusional head, he became the bearer of eternal destiny for his followers.

And he did it in the name of God.

Incidentally, I think God is very unhappy with this. At no point in the Scriptures does God ever validate polygamy. Likewise, He never ties marriage into eternal destiny. Somehow, though, people buy into these, and other, lies. I think that it is frequently because few people want to actually read the Scriptures for themselves, and would rather blindly believe what someone who has read them (supposedly) has to say about them, and about God, and about Jesus.

This is much bigger than we realize, the core issue much deeper. We want to believe that there is order in our chaotic and screwed up world, something bigger than our dead-end lives, something that makes the day-to-day routine make sense, something worth striving for. We want to believe that there is something, Someone, bigger than us. By definition, this Someone has to be different than us, and separate from us, otherwise He would be us. And if He were us, then life would be terribly pointless and depressing (even for the narcissist among us). In short, we all want to believe in God. We’re all seeking Him at some level. And when someone claims to be doing something on His authority, many rush into whatever pop culture fad is being sold. God has become a commodity. He has become an excuse. He has become justification for sexually frustrated pedophiles with superiority complexes to ruin the lives of countless “followers.”

I think God is furious when people pervert His name like this.

The spiritual journey upon which each of us embark is one that seeks a real God…not the version of Him that is sold and preached in our consumer society. There is a God that we know is up there, even if we want to fool ourselves into thinking that we don’t believe. But, if God is Who He says He is in the Scriptures, then maliciously harming each other is not His desire for us…it’s not in His character. These things are not what He wants. God is love. He personifies all that is pure about love. We all want to be loved. After the sacrifice He has made for us, I can only imagine the fury that burns in His heart when fanatics like Jeffs do what they do.

Unfortunately, there is a thin line between faith and fanaticism, and when we go wrong, we go really wrong.

I don’t think it was coincidence that a trooper stopped Jeffs on Monday. It wasn’t coincidence that Jeffs committed a traffic violation, or that he was nervous, or that the trooper remembered his training, and eventually recognized Jeffs. None of these events Monday happened by accident. They happened, I think, because God got sick of him. Because He was sick of seeing His name dragged through the mud. Perhaps His heart was broken as some young girl who had been violated under Jeffs command cried out to Him, uncertain that He even existed. And He showed up in a real way. His justice was served. His compassion was shown. His reputation, at some level, restored.

He’s good for that.

I would love to know where time goes.

Time has always been an issue for me, even moreso since I started grad school. It’s funny that all of the things I want to do are ministry, fun, and/or very productive, but there’s just not enough time for it all. Worse, prayer has very nearly become one more item on my to-do list, which is a place I’ve been in before, and I know it will be catastrophic should I return.

I was laughing with Karen last night, talking about how one just can’t be as productive after he/she gets married. I keep thinking, I didn’t get this done, but I can take care of it tonight…but then I get home, and all I want to do is spend time with my wife.

And the homework hasn’t even started yet!!!

Well, I think I’ve had my last free time for 3 months or so, but it’s time well-invested. But it makes me realize how critical time management is, which is difficult because I’m not all that disciplined. Not to mention that whole artistic tendency to lose time when working on a project. I’m also learning to discern what is necessary, and what I can live without.

Karen will be blogging here, I promise! She is teaching at a new school, and all the time setting up her room and getting to know her new students have been more than a bit taxing on her.

So, without further comment, off to class I go!!