Prepare to be tweeted like dirt

I’ve never tweeted.

I confess, I’m a tweet virgin. Never even gotten a tweet, let alone sent one.

Yes, I’ve thus far avoided joining the Twitter community. Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"-- text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to each other through the Twitter site. This way people can keep up with what you’re doing between blog posts and website updates and e-mails and phone calls.

Amazingly, Twitter touts itself as a “solution to information overload.”

On the other hand, if you join someone’s Twitter group you’re a “follower,” which has a nice discipleship-like sound to it.

Here’s the kind of stuff I’ve probably been missing:

George: Seething in anger at my coworkers and boss who are slowly draining me of creativity and the spark of human kindness. 2 minutes ago from web

Bob: This scabies medicine feels really weird. I almost don't want to put my shirt back on. Yech. one hour ago from txt

Gloria: Instead of praying today, I’m tightening up my prayer list. Just eliminated David cuz we haven’t talked in, like, forever. 9:45 a.m. June 24, 2008 from web

Alicia: Almost finished reading Thomas Friedman's NYT column. Malaise set in after realizing world is flat, and passed out. Woke up in pool of own vomit. 7 a.m. June 24, 2008 from web

Louis: Should I worry about my Dish TV spying on me after Bush signed that telecom bill? 11:35 p.m. June 23, 2008 from web

Albert: Jst gt carjacked. Mistakenly grabbed phone to twitter instd of handgun. Damn! 9:47 p.m. June 23, 2008 from txt

Steve: Hey, lightening alrt. Run for co 8:43 p.m. June 23, 2008 from txt

I’m willing to give Twitter a shot, though. Should The Door start a Twitter group? Do we really want to know what Joe Bob is up to at 1:30 in the morning? Do we?

Discuss.

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Turkmen Tales

Let's hope this marks the final chapter in the story of Saparmurat Niyazov, the "Father of All Turkmen," who was absolute dictator of Turkmenistan for 20 years until his death in 2006.

The new ruler, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, ordered the rotating golden statue of Niyazov removed from the center of the capital, Ashgabat, to stand beside a highway near the edge of town with tacky billboards and other roadside curiosities.

The new president also restored the former calendar, which had been changed by Niyazov to name the months after himself, his mother and other family members.

A friend of mine-- an aid worker-- lived for a while in Turkmenistan several years ago, and came back with hilarious but also disturbing stories about this guy. That's when I started to notice reports in the press of his harrowing antics.

He banned ballet, gold teeth and recorded music; he ordered the construction of a lake in the middle of the desert and a ski resort on the snowless foothills of the Iranian border.

Using oil revenues, he undertook massive building projects to glorify himself, including a theme park --"The World of Turkmen Fairy Tales"--based on his country's folk tales, and made his book, a "spiritual guide" called the Ruhnama, compulsory reading for students, workers, and well... everybody.

I guess the books (and the old calendars) are now being used to heat people's homes as the country claws its way back into the 19th century.

The new administration isn't exactly all sweetness and light, though. Turkmenistan has promised to amend its Religion Law to become more liberal, but the majority Muslim population still can't leave the country for the haj to Mecca.

And on April 11, officials from the local Religious Affairs Department and the secret police, raided a Bible class held by the Greater Grace Protestant church in a private flat in the capital.

Pastor Vladimir Tolmachev told Forum 18, a human rights watch organization, he was warned that the church was not allowed to teach its own members without permission from the government's Religious Affairs Committee (even though that conflicts with its officially recognised Charter). Officials told Tolmachev further warnings could lead to the church's registration being stripped from it, rendering all its activities illegal.

The church has no building of its own and has already had to move its services ten times this year, the report said.

This is definitely not fertile soil for a prosperity-gospel church.


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Suffer the little children...

With all the discussion of child abuse at the polygamist ranch in West Texas recently, you might be thinking, "Surely they're not the only folks to mistreat their kids." And you'd be right.

In fact, people never get tired of finding novel ways to put their kids in jeopardy for what seems to be a good idea at the time.

Take the devotees of a Muslim shrine in Solapur in western India's Maharastra state. For more than 500 years they've been observing a bizarre ritual--throwing their young children off a tall building for luck and to improve their health. They believe it will make their children strong, and they say no accidents have ever happened.

(In fact, Maharastra is just teeming with good luck. The poverty rate is only 24 per cent, down from 38 per cent back in the '90s. Presumably, the impoverished didn't get dropped).

Closer to home, a Corpus Christi, Texas, judge reduced felony charges against the director of a Christian boot camp and an employee to simple assault in connection with the alleged dragging of a 15-year-old girl behind a van after she fell behind during a morning run. The 32-day boot camp for girls ages 13 to 19 includes 28 days at a facility near San Antonio, then four days at a camp in Banquete, about 10 miles west of Corpus Christi. The boot camp is run by the embarrassingly named Love Demonstrated Ministries of San Antonio.

But then, sometimes kids just need an old fashioned spanking.

It's too late for 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger, a straight-A student who planned to blow up his South Carolina high school. He intended "to die and go to heaven and once he got there, he wanted to kill Jesus," according to police who arrested him. (Kids say the darnedest things). They discovered his journal, which lauded the Columbine killers, contained notes on more than 10 types of explosives that Schallenberger experimented with and evaluated a year ago.

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Shatner does Moses

We knew someone would step in to fill the shoes of Charleton Heston. But .... Captain Kirk?

It's too late for Passover, but you can hear William Shatner's unique vocal stylings as he reads passages from the book of Exodus and the Passover Haggadah, accompanied by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra playing music from Exodus: An Oratorio In Three Parts.

Didn't know Shatner was Jewish? All four of the Star Trek and Boston Legal star's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. So he's got street cred for this role.


You can listen to clips from the opus here.

(Via Jewcy.com)

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Gird up your loins with the 'Carb-Load Seder'

Jewish marathon runners are in a quandary. This year, Passover begins just two days before the Boston Marathon April 21. The holiday's strict dietary rules mean Jewish runners can't eat bread and pasta, the normal staples in the days before the big race.

For Jonah Pesner, the answer is matzoh, the unleavened bread used in the Passover ceremony. Besides matzoh, Pesner plans to pound down foods such as potatoes during a rare "carb-load seder" the night before the race.

The "carb-load seder" might strike some as strange, but it sort of fits with the historical circumstances of the Exodus. The Jews had to high-tail it out of Egypt into the desert carrying all their stuff. Things went well until they hit "the wall," which for marathoners occurs about 20 miles into the race when the carbs run out, glycogen runs low, and the body starts burning fat instead.

For the Israelites, "hitting the wall" meant running into the Red Sea with Pharoah's chariots closing in fast. Something had to give. For Moses & Co. it took a miracle. For some of the Jewish marathoners, it simply means breaking the religious restrictions. One Jewish runner says he'll eat some oatmeal and maybe a bagel on race day.

"It's not like I've been perfect in my religious beliefs. I'm beyond that," he said.

The question he needs to ask is: What would Charleton Heston do?


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Et ne nos inducas in sputum

This week's religious "people person" award will have to go to Rev. Dr. Tom Ambrose, 61, of St. Mary and St. Michael Church in Trumpington, England. The vicar was accused of spitting on his parishioners and exhibiting "arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty behavior."

The vicar denies the spitting part. "I do not spit and I never swear," he insists.

Apparently, Rev. Ambrose upset older parishioners by using slide shows instead of sermons and using so much incense in church that some worshippers felt sick. He was relieved of his post by his bishop after a tribunal investigated the charges.

As the good vicar should have realized, slide shows are just the first step on a slippery slope toward flash animations, youtube videos and God knows what else. Glad they caught it so early.

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Damn, dirty apes!

In memory of Charleton Heston's passing, I'd like to reprise a guest column contributed by Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, that ran last summer.

"There is no contradiction between faith and science... true science. I think the sacred scrolls are clear on this. It may be more true now than ever. Man is a menace. A walking pestilence."

Dr. Zaius' entire article "Intelligent Design, Live Earth and the Shaping of Simian Behavior" can be read here.


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Battlestar Gospelactica?

The first episode of the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica is titled "He that Believeth in Me" and was promoted with a publicity photo from the SciFi Channel that recreates Leonardo DaVinci's The Last Supper masterpiece. What the frak is that all about?

I plan to find out tonight.

Fly me to the Moon

I just can't wait to die.

Celestis, Inc., a company that pioneered the sending of cremated remains into suborbital space on rockets, said it would start a service to the surface of the moon that could begin as early as next year.

Depositing one gram of your ashes on the moon will cost $9,995.

"About 1,000 capsules containing ashes will be launched on the first lunar mission, expected in late 2009 or early 2010, and about 5,000 on future flights," according to a Reuters report.

"The moon is a special place," Celestis president Charles Chafer said, adding a half dozen people had already signed up for the service. "For many people, it would be a romantic notion to look up into the sky and see the moon and know that your mom or dad or loved one is up there memorialized."

Yeah, there are several people I'd like to see up there right now.

But, seriously, I can't "off" myself just to get my ashes on the moon. That would be wrong.

If I had a touch of asthma, though, I could use the allergy drug Singulair, which is suspected of inducing depression and suicide.

And if finding that out depresses me, I could take one of the popular antidepressants on the market, which the FDA has warned can cause suicidal thoughts, the very thing it's supposed to prevent.

There are plenty of reasons to leave this planet. The new episodes of Lost are being discussed around the office water cooler again. The Democratic convention this summer should be about as amusing as an episode of Itchy and Scratchy. The antarctic ice shelf is splitting off into the sea. Britney Spears is due for another round of rehab.

Yeah, it would all look much better in a powdered state from the cold lunar surface.


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Holy War, The Game

Sometimes you find something that so succinctly encapsulates a concept that no further information is required.

Take for instance the human tendency to hate, a passion that has brought us jihads, crusades and witch hunts through the ages. Cartoonist Christopher Stetson Wilson likes to take on philosophical ideas in his weekly strip The Invisible Life of Poet. He's nailed it this time.

The cartoon is titled "Holy War, The Game."


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Trust the Force this Easter

Sorry for the delay in posting. I just got out of the hospital after a kidney stone attack. (!) It got me to thinking about the impermanence of life, the sensitivity of the human waste removal system and the sad state of our nation's health care establishment.

So, to get my mind off THAT, I searched for the perfect antidote and found it: The Skywalker Last Supper mosaic. Just in time for Easter.

According to the Gizmodo blog, computer nerd Avinash Arora used an Asus M2N SLI motherboard with AMD 5400+ X2, eVGA nVidia Geforce 8800GTS 640MB and 2GB DDR2 Corsair XMS memory and took Eric Deschamps' Star Wars Last Supper painting done for Giant Magazine and created a mosaic using 69,550 images from all the Star Wars movies.

With a magnifying glass, you can just make out Jar-Jar Binks over in the corner there, taking the sop from Luke.


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Any candidates claiming to be funniest?

This is primary voting day in Texas, where I live. I went to the local library where I've always voted, but noticed it said "Democratic Polling Place." I wanted to vote in the Republican primary.

"Oh, you can only vote Democratic here," a nice lady told me. She mentioned a Baptist church some blocks away as the Republican polling place.

I've never seen nor heard of this Baptist church in my neighborhood, and I'm a Baptist from way back. I didn't have time to look for it either-- I had to get to work.

As I drove away without being able to exercise my constitutional right, I wondered: "Is this one of those double-triple-cross schemes cooked up by Karl Rove to make it seem that there aren't any Republicans left... and then they can jump out and ambush the other party in November? Sure, that must be it. What would we do without Karl, always one step ahead of everybody."

Over the years, I've agonized over the correct position on Christians in politics. I've carefully considered the scriptures recounting the choosing of David as king by the Israelite tribes, Paul's teaching on authority in Romans 13, Jesus' parables on helping the poor and the apocalyptic viewpoint on government as Beast from the book of Revelation. I even parsed the political commentary of both Jim Wallis and Richard Land--a thankless job.

In the end, I decided to vote for the funniest candidate.

George Bush got my vote last time, and that worked out really well. Everyone can agree that over the course of his presidency Bush has brought laughter and comic relief to millions.

This year I felt Obama and Clinton were both taking themselves way too seriously. Huckabee, although he has a great delivery and can banter easily with the talk show hosts, takes himself even more seriously than Obama and Clinton, if you scratch beneath the surface. (Of course, Ron Paul would have been the funniest looking candidate, but that's not my standard).

So I'm voting for McCain. On the Straight Talk Express bus, he tells the same jokes over and over, and laughs at 'em every time. He's always poking fun at his staff, the press and himself. Back in the Hanoi Hilton, he even took satirical potshots at his torturers as they beat him to a pulp and broke his arms.

We need a president who can stare into the face of adversity with a wink and a bad joke. Like Davey Crockett, John McCain could probably win a grinning contest with a grizzly bear.

But now I feel like the joke's on me. I can't find my polling place. Primary day is slipping away. Thank goodness, voting for the funniest candidate allows you to keep your expectations low. Humor, after all, is relative.

Even if I never get to vote for him, I plan on going down to join McCain at his victory party at Dallas' Fairmont Hotel tonight. I just want to shake his hand.

But I've always been partial to slapstick. So I'll be wearing my coonskin cap and carrying a concealed hand buzzer. The other celebrants probably all used a different political criteria than funniness. They may not get the joke.

I'll let you know how long it takes 'em to throw me out on my butt.


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McCain, nip this rumor in the bud!

As I was driving home from work the other day, dodging falling satellite debris and listening to NPR, I heard a rumor that I hope was a mistake.

Since Condoleeza Rice has said she definitely won't serve as John McCain's black/woman running mate, some fool suggested the name of charismatic and successful televangelist Creflo Dollar.

Sure, I can understand the desperate reasoning. On the surface it looks like a brilliant political move.

One: He's black.
Two: He shores up Religious Right support.
Three: He's a capitalist, free market entrepreneur.
Four: McCain's fundraising problems would be over. Forever.

McCain has been bickering with Barack Obama about their pledge to use the federal matching funds program. Then McCain sort of decided to opt out himself. Creflo Dollar would make that whole argument go away. There would be no need for fund raising at all. The money would just pour in from heaven.

Example: Dollar's Georgia headquarters church building, the $18 million World Dome, was constructed without any bank financing at all.

Having Creflo's super-hot wife Taffy (and her 2008 Virtuous Woman Conference) on the ticket would blunt questions about McCain's relationship with a possibly non-virtuous female lobbyist.

Dollar's ministry is undergirded by more than a million "partners" who support him with a monthly "pledge." This army of supporters would impressively swell the numbers of McCain's campaign worker bees for the duration of the campaign.

No longer would McCain get in trouble for flying around on lobbyists' airplanes. Dollar has two jets, a Gulfstream-3 valued at $5.3 million and a Gates LearJet valued at nearly $1 million, to put at the service of the campaign. They're sort of magical planes, too. "Every time I step out of my plane, devils better get outta the way," Dollar says. That could come in handy during a campaign filled with dirty tricks and innuendo.

McCain could even borrow Dollar's vapid ministry slogan, "Solutions for Change, Understanding for Life," undercutting Obama's own vapid campaign theme.

McCain might also want to incorporate some of Creflo Dollar's theological ideas. The Prosperity Gospel philosophy might allow big government to shrink, with most of the funding for the poor taken over by God himself rather than draining government coffers. "The Bible makes it so very clear," Dollar told Business Week magazine. "Preach the Gospel to the poor. What's the Gospel to the poor? You don't have to be poor anymore! "

Now that's a proposal that could cut across racial, class and party lines.

This would also solve a few problems for Creflo Dollar. Sen. Grassley can't really investigate you for tax fraud if you're Vice President of the United States.

But think about the downside. Dollar is a sleazy, money-grubbing heretic who sucks the life out of the most vulnerable in society.

(Come to think about it, he'd probably make a better politician than pastor).

Let's just hope cooler heads prevail.

(Thanks to Jeff Johansen for his keen political insight and help on this article)

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How rood! Crucifixion nails for sale?

Three of the nails used to crucify Christ are for sale on the French eBay site for 10,000 euros.

If genuine, these suckers have done a lot of traveling.

Tradition says the Holy Nails were discovered by Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena, about 300 years after the Crucifixion. ( See Skippy at the Kimbell: Where's the Cross?).

According to legend, one nail was tossed into the Adriatic to calm a storm. The other two were used by the Empress to protect her son. One was placed in his crown and another formed into a bridle for his horse, bringing to pass what had been written by Zecharias the Prophet: "In that day that which is upon the bridle of the horse shall be holy to the Lord" (Zechariah 14:20).

But that's just one of several traditions about the nails.

The French seem to have been the busiest collectors of the nails over the centuries, so it makes sense that they would be on sale at the French eBay site.

A Holy Nail was embedded in the celebrated Lance of Longinus, also known as the the Spear of Destiny, which by tradition pierced the side of Christ. Its tip was said to contain a nail or nails from the crucified Christ's hands and feet. Charlemagne kept the tip of the lance in the hilt of his famous sword, Joyeuse, according to The Song of Roland. The lance was an object of political and religious authority in Europe for more than a thousand years. It has also inspired several mediocre novels and even a video game.

Hitler put so much stock in the spear's occult powers that he made special arrangements to take possession of it when he gained control of the Schatzkammer imperial treasury in Vienna. At the end of the war, it was recovered and returned there by Gen. Patton. You can see the lance on display there today.

So now, apparently, the Holy Nails are all for sale... on eBay?

I'll start the bidding off with a used foil gum wrapper, but my "buyer rating" isn't very high. I'm sure Pope Benedict has a guy with an unlimited Visa card whose only job is to scan eBay all day long looking for bargain relics just like these.

He's probably already snapped 'em up.

(via Boing Boing)

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Assud the cowardly lion

Hamas' new children's TV show host is a Jew-eating bunny! This would normally be funny, in a Borat kind of way, but it's not satire. Its, um, real. Watch the video clip and let the creepiness wash over you.

When we last visited the Palestinian children's show Pioneers of Tomorrow, the star was Farfur the Mouse. He was killed by an Israeli soldier. Farfur was succeeded by Nahoul the Bee. But Nahoul got sick and died when he couldn't get to Egypt for medical attention because of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. In the latest segments, Nahoul has been replaced by Assud the Bunny.

Assud and his diminutive little girl co-host chat about their willingness to be martyrs for the homeland and rid the Al-Aqsa mosque of the "filth of the Jews." Then a listener calls to ask Assud, whose name means "Lion," why he isn't called simply "Rabbit."

"Because a rabbit is not good. He's a coward. But I, Assud, will get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up, Allah willing, right?"

Right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't brainwashing children to blow themselves up by killing innocent civilians fit into the "cowardly" definition somewhere?

But don't worry about the cowardly "lion." If the show follows its trajectory, Assud will die soon. That's how these uplifting Hamas scripts always end.


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Forget St. Valentine. What about Adar?

Sure, Valentine's Day is coming up--despite opposition in Saudi Arabia, India and elsewhere.

But did you know we slipped into Adar without even knowing it?

That's Adar, the Jewish month. It's considered the luckiest month in the Jewish calendar because it contains the feast of Purim.

The Talmud says, "Whoever enters Adar increases their level of joy." So... did you feel it?

This year contains a "leap month," creating both Adar I and Adar II . Confused? Jesus wouldn't have been.

The Faithhacker blog over at Jewcy.com points to a succinct explanation of lunar calendar stuff and why Jews just need an extra month sometimes:

On a 12 lunar month calendar, the month of Nissan, which is supposed to occur in the Spring, would occur 11 days earlier each year, eventually occurring in the Winter, the Fall, the Summer, and then the Spring again. To compensate for this drift, an extra month was occasionally added.

Got it now?

[Posted simply for your continuing edumacation]


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Filling that God-shaped hole

Now that Mitt Romney's dropped out of the primaries, we're left only with the Sturm und Drang of the Democratic contest for entertainment.

ABC's Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper has two interesting posts on that topic. In one, he explains the biblical allusions in Huckabee's Super Tuesday speech – the widow's mite and the "small, smooth stone" from David and Goliath's battle, "in case you aren't the half of the country that automatically understands Biblical allusions."

Then he wonders at the messianic language used by Barack Obama followers. Quoting Obama supporter Kathleen Geier:

"Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work."

He also quotes Time columnist Joe Klein, who notes "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" he sees in Obama's Super Tuesday speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential."

And James Wolcott in Vanity Fair writes that "(p)erhaps it's my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."

Actually this all seems to fit together.

Haven't the Democrats been looking or a counter balance to the values-voting evangelicals of the Religious Right? As Tapper points out, half the country is starved for meaningful spiritual allusions. Obama could fill that God-shaped hole in their hearts. A new messiah who, perhaps, gets "crucified" by defeat at the Democratic convention, could be the start of a powerful mythic storyline for secularists in need of a reason for being.

This will all last until Obama reveals himself as a mere mortal, which should come any day now. (See previous post on The Year of the Rat).


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The Year of the Rat Fink

Is it not fitting that the presidential race has really started rolling just as the Year of the Pig ends and the Year of the Rat begins?

According to Feng shui master Raymond Lo, quoted in an Agence France-Presse story, the rodent is seen as a "flower of romance," which means the year will stimulate romance, but also sex scandals.

(How would this be different from any other year?)

Lo says this year "will see the earth element sitting atop water, suggesting an outward solidity built on sliding foundations."

Uh-Huh. I can sort of sense that. Yeah.

Lee Sing-tong, a third-generation feng shui master, said there would be a big change in Hillary Clinton's health and career but that doesn't necessarily mean she will hold political power.

In contrast, Barack Obama, "has an in-born talent for leadership and is expected to be in an extraordinary political position in the next 10 years."

Crystal clear.

OK. We might all be hoping for a Ratatouille or even a Mrs. Fisby and the Rats of NIMH kind of Year of the Rat. I'd even settle or a Big Daddy Roth Rat Fink Year. But it could be a Willard version, or even -- horrors-- a year of the MAUS.

Brace yourselves. There's no cheese up this tunnel.


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Crowns of thorns and jewels, Part I

I was puzzled by a news report yesterday that said a Greek Orthodox bishop's crown had been stolen.

I didn't realize they wore crowns. Mitres, funny hats maybe, but crowns? That's a new one. (Of course, I'm pretty provincial in my knowledge of religious regalia. I do know that Baptist preachers shouldn't wear both a belt and suspenders, for instance).

It seems Bishop Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver was dining in a restaurant in a Dallas suburb when someone broke into his car and stole, among other items, a New Testament and "a jeweled crown of gold and silver, which Isaiah estimated to be worth between $6,000 and $10,000." The good reverend offered a reward of at least $1,000 if the crown is returned without damage. "That was the first gift I received as a bishop 22 years ago," he said. "I feel lost without it." At a vespers service Saturday night, he was the only priest with no head covering.

Around my neighborhood, the thieves usually break out the window, take the change in the glove box and leave your mp3 player because they're on crack and aren't thinking straight. This thief was obviously in full control of his faculties. Too bad.

But a smidgen of scripture flashed through my mind. Don't we get crowns and stuff later, where moths and rust and thieves can't get to them? I thought the pattern was to suffer here, get a crown in heaven. Not get a crown now and then suffer when it's stolen. (See I Peter 5:4--I can talk about this because I have come to terms with the reality that I probably won't get a crown of any kind, not even a paper hat).

The crown, pictured above, is beautiful, of course. But what does it evoke in the beholder? What is the bishop thinking when he puts it on? How did we get from a circlet of thorns to a jeweled crown worth $10,000?

While in our area, Bishop Isaiah probably visited the Kimball Art Museum's astounding exhibit of early Christian art that runs through March 30.

The exhibit in Fort Worth is a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of paintings, sculpture and artifacts from around the world depicting Christian artistic expression from the third through the sixth centuries.

I bought a ticket at the suggestion of a Door compadre, and was not disappointed. After more than two hours immersed in Christian history, I emerged with questions about the nature of creativity, the place and purpose of art in the life of a believer and its relation to faith and worship... and stuff.

But mostly my thoughts kept returning to an insoluble problem. Is the studio set design at TBN really art?


Next time-- Crowns of thorns and jewels, Part II: Early, but not the earliest, Christian art


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Survey disrespects churchgoers

A survey of unchurched Americans by LifeWay Research found that almost three quarters of those surveyed think churches are "full of hypocrites." Almost half those surveyed agreed that ''Christians get on my nerves.''

Response to the survey from Christian leaders was focused mainly on speaking to the underlying problem.

Franklin Graham, tripping over his shoes after parking his Harley, replied with a succinct: "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

Southwestern Baptist Seminary President Paige Patterson holstered his revolver and took up his pen: "There are several ways believers can respond to these shocking charges," he wrote. "The first is from Romans 5:15--'I know you are, but what am I?'"

Televangelist Benny Hinn said the standard retort to such complaints, based on Revelation Chapter 3, is "Kindergarten baby, Wash your face in gravy!" repeated five times and to be finished with a flourish of his white Nehru jacket.

Robert Schuller (who lives in a glass cathedral and therefore is reluctant to throw too many stones) smiled as he recalled a popular logical conundrum, "one that gets to the nub of the question, mainly, 'I am rubber, you are glue. What bounces off of me will stick to you!'"

Finally, T. D. Jakes reached into his rich reservoir of folk wisdom for this extended on-air reply, backed by the Grammy Award-winning Potter's House Choir:

"Roses are red, violets are blue,
I'm pretty cute, but what happened to you?
Those roses are wilting, the violets are dead,
your house is empty and so is your head.

I know karate, I know kung-fu,
So I ain't afraid of nobody like you.
No Reese's Pieces, no butter cups,
You mess with me and I'll kick your butt.
(All the way back to Pizza Hut).

Listen up now, you ain't got none of this,
So go home and cry, cause you just got dissed!"

Then the bishop twisted his jump rope into a flail and drove the pollsters out of the sanctuary.

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