Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Book Recommendation: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis



If the period of my life that changed my view of Christianity was a spiritual reboot, this book was the boot disk.

C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity introduces the raw basics of what Christianity is. Starting from absolutely no Biblical backup, Lewis creates an argument on why we should believe that there is a God. Furthermore, Lewis argues why the Christian God is the one true God. From this base, he dives into every nook and cranny into this religion. Morality, sin, forgiveness, hope, faith - no stone is left unturned.

I recommend this book for anyone. For Christians, it is an extremely refreshing look at Biblical beliefs. It gets cuts through churchy doctrine and gets back to the raw basics. For a non-Christian, it details just about everything there is to know about the basics of Christianity. It explains why Christians are the way they are, and why we believe what we believe.

On the road to re-learning what it was that I believed, this book guided me through step by step. I helped me to figure out what I believed and why.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Is it all Hype?

I'm concerned about Christian youth. I see teenagers with Christian t-shirts listening to Christian music everywhere. The question is whether they are celebrating God or just succumbing to hype and marketing. The message of these shirts and music is typically "we are a radical generation" and "we will change the world". It seems like Christian marketing is more concerned with making the youth feel that they are different and more special than everyone else, while at the same time, trying to make them feel that they fit into secular society.

In short, they are trying to convince teens that it is "cool" to be a Christian.

I think it's great that teenagers are excited about God. I think it's great that they're excited about "changing the world". But my fear is that it's all hype with nothing but discouragement waiting around the corner.

This comes mostly from personal experience. I'm only 23, and just a few years ago, I was the teenager wearing the Truth and No Fear t-shirts. Church leaders, Christian music, and books were continually telling us that we were the generation that would change the world. Of course, we were excited. I mean, we were going to see the end of the world. Jesus would return, the Tribulation would cover the world, and my generation would be raptured into heaven rather than die like others that came before us.

But something happened. We grew out of it.

Hype dies. It is created, it grows tremendously, it becomes huge and exciting, and then it dies suddenly. In every generation of youth, there is a point where church attendance drops off, where kids raised in the church stop caring about God. I think this is one of the reasons why.
They grow up and they live their lives like everyone else. They get a job, a family, and a mortgage. The revolution dies.

I'm worried about today's youth because I don't want to see the same thing happen to them. I want them to be excited and Jesus and His salvation. But to make them feel like they're the ones that will change the world just sets them up for disappointment. They'll feel like they've been lied to, and they'll fall away from the Lord.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Time for a list

Because I have such a big audience and because I know you all care so much, here's a list of my favorite 10 television shows:

10. King of the Hill

Ever since The Simpsons, television has given us more and more cartoon shows geared more toward adults than children. But none of these match the heart and soul of King of the Hill. Hank Hill does his best to be the model for upstanding Americans, Christians, and most importantly, Texans. He's an old fashioned, very conservative family man just trying to survive in a crazy, messed up world.

9. Family Guy

A lot of Christians hate Family Guy. I don't care. It's hilarious. Each episode is filled with an abundance of winks and nods toward modern pop culture. You will never get all the jokes Family Guy throws out there, but somewhere else, someone is keeling over laughing. This show has absolutely everything for everyone...except people who hate Family Guy.

8. ER

This show has been on for many, many years. I believe this fall starts their 13th season. There are different storylines now, and the entire cast has changed since it began in 1994. But this show is as good as ever. And even though it is a medical show and can get a bit soap opera-like, ultimately, it is a show about people and the struggles they face. No, not the patients...the doctors.

7. The Office

I love both versions of this show, American and British. And although the American version will never get away with what it's UK counterpart can (FCC violations would shut it down), it always finds some way to rip down the barriers of office political correctness. For ever real life office character, there is an enormous caricature in this show. The slacker, the suck up, the annoying boss, they're all there. They all deliver their lines with such bland, serious faces that for a split second, you'd actually think you were watching a documentary on a paper company.

6. Firefly

Here's to canceled television shows. Fox canned this show after airing only eleven episodes. But this sci fi show about a rag-tag crew of fugitives, priests, and thieves developed a huge cult following. Enough to give the crew of the Firefly-class ship Serenity one last hurrah in a feature film. The show was an interesting mix of interstellar travel and the old west. And not only did it seem to work, but it brought science fiction to a level where you could actually understand and relate to the characters and situations. Above all, every member of the crew was completely different from one another. Yet they were a family to the end. Watch the whole series (14 episodes) and then top it off with the movie, Serenity.

5. The Colbert Report

I don't like the Daily Show. I think it's more politics than comedy, and I don't find Jon Stewart particularly funny. Steven Colbert, on the other hand, is a riot. His show is modeled after Fox news shows, most notably, The O'Reilly Factor. Colbert's all-American, vain persona is so believable, and so consistent, that he is impossible not to enjoy. Conservatives love him because it feels as if they finally have someone on their side. Liberals love him because they know all his jokes are tongue in cheek. And if you haven't heard the terms "truithiness" and "wikiality" yet, look them up on wikipedia.

4. Seinfeld

The best sit-com ever. Hands down. This show revolutionized the way we look at the world. It brought a new vocabulary to the english language and revealed the things we didn't want to admit. Things like "shrinkage" and "master of our domain" are every day jokes now. For a show about nothing, it sure was something. TV comedy died a little the day Seinfeld went off the air.

3. 24

The very concept of this show had me excited before it ever aired. There are 24 episodes in a season, each one an hour long. Each episode occurs in real time, so by the end of the season, you've watched one full day unfold. Jack Bauer is an FBI agent working at the Los Angeles Counter Terrorism Unit. You watch as Jack comes against terrorists from all over the globe and his life slowly falls apart. It is an incredible action show with so many twists and turns, that your head will spin.

2. Battlestar Galactica

I'm a sci fi lover. I've watched more than my share of Star Trek and even understood much of what they were talking about. But in 2003, Ronald D. Moore resurrected an old classic and broke the sci fi mold. This is not the campy, nerdy 1978 series that had men walking around in tin foil costumes. This a dark, gritty, military show about a race that had just been through a devastating holocaust. The robotic Cylons have rebelled against humans and turn the Twelve Colonies, humanity's homeworlds, into nuclear wastelands. Just a small fleet of 50,000 souls survive, and are protected by just one military vessel, the Battlestar Galactica. They are constantly pursued by the Cylons as they search for their one last hope: the mythical thirteenth colony - Earth. To make matters worse, there are Cylons within the fleet that look and feel human. Anybody could be an enemy, Cylon or not.


Every character in this show is flawed. There is no noble Captain and devoted crew. Every character is a hero, and every character is a villain. The show brings sci fi to a whole new level of realism. There are no aliens, there are no strange foods or fashion styles. In fact, everything about the Colonists invokes a feeling of earth even down to the military on many different levels. It is space opera at it's best (Second only to The Empire Strikes Back). It's not just about Cylons attacking, but also the threat of each other. It constantly asks the question: does humanity deserve to survive?

Time magazine called Battlestar Galactica the best show of 2005. Read the article here.

1. Lost

This is the best television drama. Ever.

Again, here is a show with a premise that I was excited about before it came out. A plane crashes on a tropical island and the survivors have to...well, survive. But the show is much, much deeper than that. For starters, there is a monster on this island that nobody has seen, a looping transmission from a radio tower in which a french woman says, "it killed them all", and attacking polar bears. Confused yet? Good.

There is nothing out there like Lost. It's an incredible mix of just about every genre - drama, sci fi, thriller, romance, and a bit of comedy - it's got it all. The survivors have to find a way to settle on this island while discovering the secrets that the island holds. They eventually find the french woman and discover that there are "others" on the island as well. Specific numbers keep showing up, their meaning unknown. A hatch is found, buried in the ground, what's inside is a mystery. And every time a question is answered, a dozen more pop up. A formula to keep viewers watching more, and wanting more.

But what makes this show really stand out is it's outstanding thematic element. Lost is, essentially, a character study. Every character has a past, some dark, some bizarre, some heartbreaking. Each episode focuses on one character's story both on the island, and in flashbacks to their past, usually with a theme that connects the two. What results is a sometimes breathtaking, sometimes scary, and sometimes edge-of-your-seat thrill ride. But Lost always is an inspiring television masterpiece.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Politics and the Church

I had planned on writing an entry sometime in the future on political stances within the church, but it seems it has already been covered. This subject is discussed on Scot McKnight's blog and I'm not ashamed to admit that he's a much better writer than I am.

http://www.jesuscreed.org/?p=1304

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Focus

After this past year of college, I feel revitalized. My walk with Christ is stronger than it has been my entire life, and it's growing stronger every day. My spiritual reboot was successful and I became integrated into a great ministry on campus.

But I hear you saying, "Ryan, you told us all about how you re-learned everything and how excited you are in your last entry, but what was it exactly that changed in your life?"

My focus changed.

In the process of my so called "reboot", I re-learned what was important and what was merely church doctrine and speculation. What really changed in this past year was that I began to focus less and less on the little things that make church...churchy, and more on the message of Christ. Suddenly, Bible passages that had been drilled into me all my life were starting to make perfect sense. It's amazing how enthusiastic you can get about life if you know what you're living for.

Different focuses are, essentially, why there are different denominations within Christianity. Some churches focus primarily on the importance of water baptism. Others choose Acts 2, and place a tremendous emphasis on the works of the Holy Spirit. Some focus almost exclusively on the book of Revelation and the end times. All of these things are good and have a place, but the focus is off a bit.

What I found to be the most important thing the Bible teaches us - the reason the gospels were written - is the life of Christ. He set an example for us, and we are to follow that example. That's what it means when we call ourselves Christians. Jesus loved everyone he came across and was compassionate toward the week and helpless. He was in constant correspondence with God, His father. I believe we are to mimic Christ in all aspects of his life. In fact, the rest of the New testament consistently steers in this direction.

We need to take a long, hard look at ourselves as Christians. Do we see Christ in us? Do we act like Him? Do we reach out to strangers as we would our best friends? Do we have a strong father-child relationship with God?

If not, we need to ask God to help us become who he wants us to be.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Spiritual Reboot

This is my first blog entry on my first blog site. I'm very new to this sort of thing, but I thought I'd try my hand at it.

I am a Christian. I was raised a Christian, and I always went to church with my family on Sundays. I accepted Christ at a very young age with my parents at my side. I attended youth group during high school and loved it. I made many friends within that youth group, many of which I am still good friends with.

But there was a problem. In the past few years I began to examine the church; to examine myself. Many questions entered my mind. Questions like: Why am I here? What purpose does God have for my life? If God does have a purpose for my life, why doesn't he tell me what it is? Why do I come to church, week after week, just to hear the same message over and over? In short, I began to wonder if this was what being a Christian was all about. Not to say that I was considering abandoning my belief in God and my Christian walk. I knew I wouldn't do that. My question was: Is this all that there is?

I became quite aggravated by certain aspects of church. There were many superstitious traditions going around the church body that I did not agree with. Some of this traditions were as old as the church, some were only a few years old. Don't get me wrong, traditions in the church are good, but when they don't seem to have much biblical principle attached to them is when they turn from belief to superstition.

Overall, I felt unsettled, unsatisfied, and restless as a Christian. Wasn't accepting Christ and becoming a believer supposed to end all of that? My biggest concern was that it was only in my mind, or that I was being attacked by Satan. I'm sure some might still say that I was being attacked. Fortunately, something happened in my life that changed my Christian walk forever - I went to college.

The college years are extremely integral years in a person's life, as I found out first hand. Separation from old friends and family give you the space you need to sort out who you are as a person, and not just accept that you are who they say you are. It was during the first months of college - about a year ago now in fact - that I went through what I refer to as my "spiritual reboot".

That is to say, I took the sense of knowing all there was to being a Christian, of knowing everything that Christ said in the gospels and what he meant, about knowing exactly what would happen in the end times, and cleared them all out of my mind and started re-learning everything I thought I already knew. All of Christ's teachings, the ten commandments, works of the Holy Spirit, what it meant for Jesus to die on the cross for our sins - everything was re-learned. Two things happened during this process: I understood everything much more than I ever had in the past, and I realized that I believed almost everything I had previously learned over the span of my Christian life.

As you might imagine, it was quite a relief to find out that I wasn't a heretic. But as I went through my first year at a four year college (I had previously attended a community college for a couple years) my faith became stronger than it ever had before. I became integrated into a great campus ministry almost immediately after arriving at the college, and I made some great friends through that church. Through that ministry, a few books by some really good Christian authors, and some serious research into the Bible, I became more aware of what it means to be a Christian.

The main purpose of this blog is to help others make a similar journey to discover what it truly means to be a Christian. I intend on writing many more posts that will elaborate on my experience and what I learned. My hope is to help Christians, as well as non-Christians, understand what Christianity is and begin living life in peace, not in frustration.

That's not to say that this will be a blog made up of entirely spiritual entries. I have many diverse interests that I'd like to talk about. Television, movies, music, books, and they're not all Christian themed.

I now conclude my first entry. It is essentially the basis for this blog. I look forward to seeing what kind of feedback it gets and joining you in many different discussions.