dotLove: don't stop looking.

There are many ways to love your neighbor into change and spiritual growth, and Joel Kilpatrick does it best with satire. I thought Californians were supposed to be mellow and laid back but Joel has the proverbial elbow in your ribs the whole way through this book, A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Habitat.
I was exposed to Joel's work via his LarkNews web site, a work of satirical artistry, par excellance. I wanted more of his work, but being poor and cheap I looked for and found this book in my local library (yay for libraries). It was shelved right next to the work of a kindred spirit, Cousin Minnie Pearl.
There's an old saying about the preacher who has "stopped preachin' and gone to meddlin"; Joel Kilpatrick is that kind of preacher.

by Joseph William Perry
Just when you feel like all the fun has gone and will never come again, joy comes from an unexpected place.
For more than seven years I worked for a test-scoring company. It was seasonal work, only about four to six months per year, but it was a good place with good management and interesting work. Plus there were lots of interesting people around. I made lots of friends; I felt like I belonged—like at summer camp when I was a kid. I had extra-special men-friends and lady-friends. I had friends older than me, old enough to be a father-figure; I had friends younger than me, young enough for me to be a father-figure to them.

by Joseph William Perry

In the last few weeks I have found three books by three novelists which have this theme in common—that they expose the falseness and hypocrisy that pervades much of institutional Christianity. While it is true that, over the years many have opposed this negative establishment, it remains a perennial force—almost an alter-ego of true religion. It has grown up alongside the true, the loving and the merciful in the same proverbial fields of growth. Just as, according to Christ's parable of the wheat and tares, we should expect it to.

Each of these novels I stumbled upon in a different way; each one was a pleasant surprise to me with their content and their quality. Each of these authors is capable of pointing out the problem, the falsity, the hypocrisy; each offers the spirit of love and mercy as the answer.

The first of these three goes by the name Jake Colsen, a pseudonym for the team of Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman. The book, So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore, is about a mysterious stranger who leads a shaky evangelical pastor into a deeper walk with God. It was published early in 2006 and I stumbled on the web site through a message on one of the bulletin boards. The book has its own web site where it can be read online or downloaded freely.

An Unofficial History of the Jesus-Rock Era

By Steve Morley

Rock and roll, when it’s doing its job, is going to cause controversy. The same can be said of Christianity, especially in these days when political and religious crossfire could, from a distance, be mistaken for Ford-versus-Chevy fightin’ words. If you steadfastly believe in the power of either of these cultural monuments, you’d best be prepared for a skirmish. Should you combine music and faith in the same conversation, you’re likely in for a lengthy debate. The historically segregated worlds of Christian-themed music and secular pop/rock have flirted for decades, each eyeing the other’s wardrobes in search of new accoutrements, if not total makeovers. Ideologically, though, the two spheres remain at odds, leading puzzled observers and offense-prone outsiders to perceive the advocates of artistic segregation either as intolerant, tongue-clucking prudes or communion wafer-thin hypocrites who watch VH-1 with their curtains drawn. While neither image is entirely fictional, it is ungracious – and inaccurate – to arbitrarily assign such labels to the many who walk a reasonable middle ground.

In the classic film, It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) discovers—to his great joy—that he really is the richest man in town. He didn't, of course, arrive at this realization quickly or easily but through great pain and confusion. Truth be told, that is where we are most of the time ...fighting for meaning and significance like George.

I have arrived at that time of life (for the past several years really) when, for some reason—spiritual, emotional, biological(?), I have the unavoidable task of evaluating of my life up till now. This task presses in not from an outside authority; God, church, employers do not require it of me. I haven't had a great legal crisis like George Bailey, or a severe illness like some others have had. Rather it comes from inside of myself—from some internal, psycho-spiritual voice that wells up insistently, wanting to be heard, demanding to be answered. Yet, even though it is a voice I seem to hear, it is also, at the same time, a voice with which I speak. It is my inner voice speaking ...and my inner ear listening.