Too many churches?

It seems like every month, sometimes twice a month, I hear about a new church starting up in town. In fact, I read about a new one this last week in the paper and drove past a new one last week that I didn't realize had started up in a familiar location.

One thing that's always gotten my goat is when a new church starts up I tend to hear the same complaint: "There's too many churches!"

First of all, how could there ever be too many churches? Especially if we truly believe that 'where two or more are gathered' thing that Jesus said. I mean that sort of opens the door pretty wide in my estimation. Probably several dozen 'churches' happening in Walmart and Panera bread right now. Even if your interpretation of scripture doesn't let you get that lax, then still, how could their ever be too many churches ... or church buildings?

I've been researching the topic of church buildings lately. There have been several close their doors in Oak Ridge over the last four or five years. The word I get from many around town is that another half dozen churches are a handful of funerals away from shutting their doors too. The next 25 years will be interesting to say the least. We could end up with a metric ton of what I call, "Religious Brown Fields," or churches that for lack of a better term have "closed up shop."

There's not too much 'natural' about this progression. Natural progression would be our older churches growing and planting new churches, but this isn't happening so much -- at least not here. Maybe this happens in other places, I don't know... but in Oak Ridge we've developed a new populations of religious connoisseurs. Like a fine wine taster, the connoisseur of Christianity moves from bottle to bottle in search of the 'perfect' balance of flavor and smoothness.

We have so many connoisseurs of faith that there's a new market built up around the simple concept of providing the connoisseur a 'package' that he/she can't easily walk away from. There's nothing at all wrong with 'shopping' a church for a fit. The problem stems from the 'fashion' of the fit. Yesterday's 'fashion' was a fight over 'contemporary' worship styles verses 'traditional' ones. I'm not going to get into that in this particular blog, it's been done too many times.

The main thing to say is that can't ever be too many churches... the issue is whether or not they are the home of authentic ministry. As a home to authentic ministry, they will be centered on the person of Jesus and that centering can't be packaged or peddled to a connoisseur. You either have Him at the center in a traditional church, or you do not. You have Him at the center in a contemporary church or you do not.

Unfortunately, we know something else about a Christ-centered church. They're going to be pretty rare. They'll be taking their cues from the community they serve, not from a 'what's happening now' spirituality rooted hundreds of miles away. They'll probably go easy on the billboards because their budgets are tight -- and their budgets are going to be tight because they're probably pretty busy meeting needs. They aren't likely to contain a community's "Who's Who" of important people, and their authenticity will be a bit terrifying for connoisseurs who can't bare the thought of shedding a layer of pretension while out shopping packages. They won't pour every second into getting a Sunday service "just right," because the majority of their ministry will be happening Monday through Saturday. They'll seem small and they'll seem poor, if for no other reason than having the courage to look the 99 in the eye while relentlessly pursuing the one.

Too many churches? No, never.

Too many churches decorating the sheep pen? Maybe.

I'm happy to be in a place where I can set out to pasture and search for the missing... serving a people who don't require me to stay in the sheep pen, or see my primary duty as being a shepherd who spends his days changing absorbent newspaper from beneath the woolly loins of those who have never left the trough.

Playing Rook when the Rookie Calls Trumps

"A human being is the only card in the universe that trumps itself." ~ Me

You can write the above down because its a truism I hope to explain. For starters, I love the card game Rook. If you've never played, it's much like Spades. The difference is in the suits (which are colors); the points (which aligned along face cards in spades, except with numbers); and the biggest difference of all -- the kitty.

The "kitty" (sometimes called 'nest') is a set of five cards dealt into the middle, all of them face down (but in some variations you can turn over the top card to get people interested). Bidding starts and with a total of 180 pts possible (meaning you win every hand), you work with your partner across the table to maximize your bid so that you can win the 'kitty.' Highest bidder wins the kitty, then gets to discard his/her five worst cards -- and most importantly, the high bidder gets to call a trump color.

The first time I played Rook, something amazing happened. I can look back on it now as an adult and know with all certainty that God was winking at me. My father, my uncle, my grandfather, and my aunt's husband, used to play this game together every visit to Southern Alabama. The place reeked of cigarette smoke and the game itself was played on a TV tray. None of that stopped me at age 7 from becoming highly interested in the game.

I watched, observed, and learned the rules. That's what we do first in this thing called life -- and the rules we learn are often hard-wired into us by the time we start grammar school. Once I felt like I knew enough to enter the game, I waited for my chance.

It finally came when one of regulars couldn't play, so I sat and took my cards one by one. I will never forget that first hand. I didn't know what to do with it, because I had never seen a hand dealt like the one I received. You see, I had been dealt a full hand of Green cards, plus the Rook.

Let's put this in perspective just a moment.

The odds of being dealt a Royal Flush in poker are .000154. Got that in your head? Now, some genius needs to multiply that out because a Royal Flush is only five cards. I got twelve cards dealt to me in succession, including the Rook.

So I didn't know what to do... I had no proverbial 'losers' in my deck... if I got to call trumps. My dad was my partner and he noticed the puzzled look on my face. Fearing that I truly wasn't ready to play Rook at the grown folks table, he asked for permission to help me. When I told them all that I didn't know how to bid my hand because it was all the same color, they laughed.

When I laid down my hand, they stopped laughing. It was an automatic 180 pts. The perfect hand from the first time Rookie playing Rook.

I know, I know ... you shoddy materialists out there are already working out the math to show its not impossible. You're right. It's not impossible. Just really freaky.

Welcome to the human experience on a much more incredible scale. I'm not even going to start with the Goldilocks syndrome of astrophysics and geology. Let the Intelligent Design crew wear out that motif at the expense of the taxpayer.

I'm going to head in a much different direction and let you know that I very much enjoy the paintings of Paul Gauguin. Now there are an estimated 100 billion neurons in my brain, and while they don't all even remotely serve the same purpose, there's still enough of them to keep us all pretty confused about what's going on with human consciousness.

I suspect that one day science will be able to give us mental 'propensities' for about anything -- from chocolate lovers, to the God spot, this sort of chap isn't going to stop until he's made P-Zombies of all of us. It is the dream of the physicalist to do away with anything deemed unquantifiable, but upon this point I'd love to issue him a dare:

I dare you to empiricize my love of Paul Gauguin.

Imagine a world in which every brain state could be captured and examined. Imagine that the minuscule amount of people out there who like Paul Gauguin could be contrasted enough times to remove the variables and produce the unquestionable Gauguin 'style' of collected neurons. Of course, you will need to imagine this for one simple reason: It won't ever happen.

But let's play dress up in the Emperor's clothes and pretend they do it. We now have the Gauguin signature in the brain. My perfect Rook hand has been coded, the trump cards all laid out to behold. The table "ooohs" and "aaaahs." Even I don't know what it means and I'm the kid holding the cards. The proverbial, ontological 'kitty' is mine whether I realize it or not. I could be a P-Zombie or I could be Dr. Frankenstein. Doesn't matter, I get to call the trump...

Now in spite of being dealt all Greens and given a perfect 180 pt. hand, suppose I choose Red instead? I can do that after all, I am the highest bidder. I am the Kwisatz Haderach! At least when it comes to Rook and Paul Gauguin.

If I choose Green, then it is impossible for me to NOT run the table and take every hand. But what if I choose another color?

For the naturalist, there would need to be some sort of neural representation for my switch, and indeed I have little doubt that the from the muck of humanity some piece of work wouldn't then attempt to go about mapping such neurons in order to try and prove his point. Of course, you need to imagine for the same simple reason: It won't ever happen.

But let's pretend it does. Since the Emperor is out of clothes (and he was swinging his junk in the wind last time we tried this), let's just remove his skin and send him out as an mass of sinew and bone. No better looking theory than this, for certain.

Now we're left with a set of neurons that not only determines exactly when and where I like Paul Gauguin -- a statistical probability, mind you -- we've moved on to the neurons that control those Gauguin neurons. We've discovered that when the Gauguin neurons are laid to bare and communicated to the Gauguin lover, a different set of neurons fire causing the hunk of flesh that they say that I am, to up and un-devote himself.

Well, crap. Someone went and told the talking meat that science had discovered the neurons controlling his neural switch from Gauguin to non-Gauguin, so the assembly of brain cells went and fired a different combination on us. Now he's all about loving Gauguin in rain, but not in the sun. Another set of computations will need to take place.

The lifeless, gutless, and altogether Spock-like scientist will start creating a whole other set of neural criteria to map out his lab rat. And every time that frog he wants to dissect-- the human soul -- stays one step ahead of him.

Why is this you ask?

It's a simple answer. This is my game. I was dealt the perfect hand. I get to call the trump. And no matter how much complaining comes from either end of the table, this won't ever change.

Humanity is more than the sum of its parts. We've been dealt a very special hand to play in this Universe. I learned this the very first time I played Rook. And anyone who says otherwise has never read Achilles and the Tortoise.

Man is the measure of all things... Goldilocks or not -- PZombie or not -- materialist or not. The reason seems simple enough to me:

Genesis 1:26

Welcome to the house of tautological mirrors. If you need a map, give me a call... at age 40, I am about half-way through.

Why Me? I'm busy!!!

Ok folks. I'm a gamer and I use a headset to play for a couple of reasons. First of all, I tend to play into all hours of the night -- meaning I have to have something to keep the noise of blowing things up with my virtual rocket-launcher to a minimum. Second, I use team speak software, so I need a mic built into my headset in order to bark commands and reveal enemy locations to my team, which more often than not, is comprised of members from across the globe.

I have to tell you that after almost a decade of this behavior, nobody makes decent headset. They've all got the same basic issue that any pair of headphones you've ever purchased has -- the wire that leads into the ear piece eventually gets frayed and starts to cause the sound to crackle. It always happens. On every set I've bought, with every brand name I've ever tried, and at every price point that I've been able to find.

It's a crock. I have never had a headset last me more than nine months, even the very best ones. The cheap ones might go three months before they start giving way.

I know what you're thinking -- go wireless. First of all, should I have to? I mean I can get 80,000 miles or better out of my tires and $40 a piece. I can barely get through 300 hours of gaming on a headset of equal value. Second, have you ever tried to find a wireless headset with a microphone in Oak Ridge? Go try it. You can't find squat in Oak Ridge when it comes to quality electronics. You've got Walmart and Staples.

So drive to Knoxville, right?

Forget it. The last set I bought at CompUSA (now out of business in K-town) didn't work worth a crap. Besides the fact that I don't want my neighbors hearing me on their own cordless phones as I scream bloody murder about being beaten to death with a virtual shovel, I just don't dig the cordless stuff because you never know when a battery is going to give out, or a flare from our sun is going to feed your brain with static.

So why do I have to be the guy to go out and design a decent gaming headset? I don't have the time and people with training could do it much faster than me. You know whoever designed such a thing would be an instant millionaire because I don't know a single gamer who sings the praises of their quality headset. Everyone that plays regularly replaces their set annually.

Come on you brilliant people. Get rich for crying out loud! The market is begging for something decent and I don't have the time to do your job for you, no matter how rich I could get off of it.

Maybe I will train one of my kids to start thinking along these lines. By the time I'm 55 and they graduate from college, perhaps the fruit of my own loins can get out there and build something that doesn't fray at the entry to the earpiece. And I'm thinking my kids could do it for less than a million bucks in profit too.

ACK!!!!

Meliorism or Melancholia

Meliorism will change the universe. It's seldom that I make many claims, here or elsewhere. I am sort of possibilities kind of person -- I like the options left open. In fact, the moment I feel someone trying to box me in I start swinging, rhetorically speaking. But I am convinced of the first sentence of this post.

I mentioned transhumanism before in various posts. I suppose tonight just felt like the right time to start laying some things out. After all, I am still on vacation. I've got the time to at least dabble. :)

I should say that nothing here confirms or denies my own personal Christian faith. It is a philosophical rambling about things that haven't been fully determined. I will also say that nothing can really be denied from a material standpoint either, or the view of a naturalist. In fact, it is more likely true that materialism confirms these presuppositions than denies them. Maybe I'll get around to defending that statement, maybe I won't. It's a teleological world view that until the end of it all, remains just a theory.

I'd like to begin with something as common as a stone. Stones are literally scattered everywhere. I'd suggest that the majority of readers are within reach of naturally occurring stone within a few paces of the place they happen to be sitting. Those who are not could easily obtain one, or a dozen, in under a half hour. Stones come in a variety of shapes and sizes, even compositions. Stones can be used for a variety of different things: they can break apart other materials; they can be thrown at people or prey; they can used to construct buildings and bridges; and as Aesop remind us, they can even be used to raise the level of water in a jug.

Naturally occurring stones do a few things on their own too. They can redirect rivers or even block the natural flow of water; they can stand against wind or serve as rooftops for slugs and worms. On their own, stones have some potential to direct the course of Nature and they undoubtedly played a part in the shared history of this planet and beyond. Suffice to say, we are living on a pretty big one.

Somewhere along the way, the ancestors of the modern human figured out stones could be useful. That through a force of volition, stones could be carved into tools; and later, into entire abodes offering protection and shelter from the elements. Imagine walking in the woods and finding a structure of stones, maybe four stone walls comprised of many smaller stones. You'd instantly recognize that something or someone was taking the naturally occurring sporadic spread of rocks and doing something with them.

Welcome to humanity. And not just humanity, all of Life. It just happens that humanity uses stones most efficiently. The development of mankind is undeniably attached to the ability to use stones -- and not instinctively either. Sometimes we exerted our will upon stones just for fun, or for worship, or for aesthetics, or even for murder (ask Cain).

Ok, I'm stopping on the stone thing because you're bored. Here's the law of meliorism at work: the presence of Life, particularly human life, makes Nature work 'better.' Now I recognize that 'better' is a tautology here at this stage of the definition, but it won't always be. You see stones weren't the beginning, they weren't the end, and they don't even put in a dent in the way in which mankind has already and will continue to mold matter.

Replace the word 'stone' and add in the words copper circuit and you've got conductivity and and the potential for a re-organization of matter in something as complex as a computer. Take away the word 'stone' and add in the word 'DNA' or 'photon' and you start to the picture of what we as human beings are capable of doing to matter.

We are re-organizing it. In most cases, and I believe history proves this, we are 'better' organizing it. And we've really only just begun. Provided we don't kill each other in the next 10,000 years it won't be stones we are moving around -- it will be the very fabric of space time, or our own quantum biology.

Nature has already begun giving herself a face-lift and she's using us to do it. The cosmos will follow suit. It seems inevitable -- again, provided we don't kill ourselves in the process. This is what transhumanism is, more or less. Meliorism, contrary to the wiki definition linked above, is more than a metaphysical concept. It's a recorded process. What this so-called 'process' of transformation looks like at the end of the game is a question of teleology.

This is the philosophical position I accept, because it seems to me that the alternative is melancholia. We are fully capable of thinking less than ourselves than we ought, just ask Richard Dawkins. He will give you an answer to the above and when he speaks, he will really meme it. God isn't real, and when he says that, he memes it.

I'll blog that later, but for now either we have some say in our destiny, or we do not. And if we have some say our personal destiny then we have some say in collective destiny; and if our collective destiny, then global destiny, and if global destiny, then cosmic destiny, and if cosmic destiny then perhaps we had some part to play in that original scattering of loose, unorganized stone.

But that too is another day.

For now, the choice seems to me to be a melancholy acceptance of our proverbial lot as a human beings, or a blatant and intentional meliorism to be determined as the teleology of the universe unfolds and Nature begins to see herself as she really is -- through our own eyes, her own eyes.

Of Biting Heels & Crushing Heads

The waters of the Gulf around Destin are normally a pristine white. A quick rinse from a water hose tosses all the loose sand back to the ground from which in came. This morning however, the sand didn't come off. I took a 20 minute walk down the beach and did my very best to avoid the balls and sticky tar that had washed up overnight. Obviously, I wasn't successful.

Marianne Williamson wrote, "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us."

Sometimes I believe this is true. But on mornings like this, I wonder. In Genesis, God told the Serpent that a descendant of humanity would "crush your head, and you will bite his heal." This has been interpreted in many different ways, but as I glanced down at the heels of my shoe, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had bitten by a terrible evil. The head of the serpent might have been dealt a punishing blow from the cross of Christ, but it is still wriggling and squirming in the spasm of death. That spasm is no where more evident than in human persons. Call it sin, greed, a selfish gene... whatever. It's alive in us and we need saving from ourselves.

We truly are "powerful beyond measure" and power is a knife that cuts both ways. Williamson continues by saying that our "playing small does nothing to serve the world." Perhaps this statement is nowhere more evident than in our ecological power.

Man may be a great serpent who unleashed a viper's nest of oil on life in the Gulf of Mexico. We've been bitten on the heel, no doubt. The question that remains is:

"Will we find the Light and crush the head of our own greed? And when we finally do, will it be too late?"


More later.

Narcissus, the Post-Oil Haze

Man has power. Nature does too. When the two powers collide nobody wins. Today, I watched millions of tiny tar balls roll onto the sand from the surf. The impact of man's power may be that we bite off our nose to spite our face. The sheer joy of commanding a redfish to the shore has been trumped by the absolute inability we seem to have to stop a gushing hole that we punctured in the floor of the ocean.

I spent the morning prior to the oil's arrival, fishing the surf before retiring the pool for a few hours, then sprinting off to lunch. After a shepherd's pie and two handcrafted wheat beers, my faith in humanity was soaring, literally.

But within a few short hours, I caught word that the Gulf spill had finally hit Destin. I went down to the ocean's edge with my family to witness and lament.

MLK, Jr. once said that man's scientific power had outrun his spiritual power. I believe this is true. We can tear apart entire continents, but for whatever reason, we don't stop enough to consider the consequences.

Like a dagger through the heart, the haze of oil stung my eyes as I walked along the shore. Tiny balls from the size of a dime, all the way up the size of coffee lid had washed ashore. It took all of twenty minutes to transform the white sand of Destin into a shoreline of two black tracks of coal. I fear that by the time I wake and return in the morning, the scene will be much worse than these two pictures reveal.

So much of this future -- from ursurping the power of a 30lb redfish, to tearing back the shell of the earth and drinking her thick, black blood -- this future of ours, and of Nature itself, resides strangely and unambiguiously in our sometimes wretched, and sometimes beautiful hands.

The path we walk is a tightrope. Think too little of ourselves and we'll never take our actions seriously enough to thrive as a species. Think too much of ourselves, and we will become victims to our own hubris.

I will blog more on the oil spill tomorrow. But for now, the sheer joy I felt at reeling in that big fish yesterday has been trumped by the horrifying thought that I may not reel another like it for many years to come.

Narcissus, the Pre-Oil Gaze (Glaze)

My second morning in Destin was oil free. I had taken care of the fishing license the day prior and subconsciously programmed myself to get up at daybreak. (Can anyone else do this?) I made my way down to an empty beach, an empty expanse of ocean that was crystal clear, calm as glass, an awaiting my exploitation. My ancient lover was beckoning me across the expanse of time and I was ever-so anxious to dip a line.

When I have a line in the water, I become a different person -- some dug-up mystical relic of a time long past. They say that early men were divided between hunters and gatherers. If I believed in past lives, I'd say I was neither... maybe some village shaman with magic stick and twine that conjured up healing fillets for the tribe. When I fish, I experience a level of being with the world that I find in few other places. I can hear Chevy Chase not so much telling me "Be the ball, Danny," but instead hear his "chun-na-na-num" of transcendence in each crank of my reel. I am not good at too many things, but I am an excellent fisherman, trained by one of the best in my father. (Happy Father's Day, dad!)

So as I stood in the surf of the Gulf of Mexico, I didn't know whether or not I would catch fish. I only knew that if there were fish to catch anywhere in the vicinity, they belonged to me. After snagging a few ladyfish, I started to notice a school of large redfish swimming through. Quickly, I changed baits.

Power erupted from the calm surface of the water like electricity in my line; and the old fire from the bosom of my soul sprung to life. The line zipped and I waited with a patience one can only learn after having lost many fish to an eager hook set. When I did pull the rod back, the fish was mine.

Seventeen pound test, 25 minutes of fighting produced this beauty: a 40" redfish, weighing in around 30lbs. In the moments that this fish tugged and pulled against me, a felt the joy and anticipation of deeper struggle. A fight that pits all of humankind against nature.

I know there are those who want to view humanity as a tiny red fleck of meat in a huge goldfish bowl. To these sorts of folks, I can only raise a finger to my lips and beg their silence. Humanity is special -- so special in fact that we can unleash ourselves upon her with ferocity and mavolence at a moment's notice. Just ask this fish. Ask him while he shudders and turns beneath the flexing of my wrists. Ask him while his gills absorb a poisoned tar which we've unbottled from the crust of our planet.

We don't do humanity any favors by pretending to be so small. We certainly don't do Nature any either. Perhaps one day soon, I will outline the reasons why I am a philosophical transhumanist. But for today, I am content to bask in a pre-oil glaze, casting a zealous gaze at my prize. It's life in those moments belong to me. And the life of this planet -- all life -- that belongs to us.

What we do with it appears to be another story altogether. Because as I sit typing, our hubris is collecting on the shore in sullen, dirty balls of tar.

What Your Server Knows

I’m on vacation. I’m supposed to be thinking about the beach, the waves, the sun, and one of my great loves – fishing. Yet, I as stare out into the dark expanse of the Gulf of Mexico approaching midnight in the panhandle, I am paradoxically struck by a beauty that I never want to leave; yet at the same time, my mind yearns for home.

We visited a restaurant this evening and when it came time to ‘tip’ on an overpriced meal, I was reminded of a $112 tab accumulated by a group of Oak Ridgers twenty years ago when I was waiting tables. It was a Sunday afternoon (a party of eight or nine) and after waiting on them all basically hand to mouth, I walked away with $2.10, my hourly wage.

Like a bad taste, that flavor still lingers inside me two decades later—and it has less to do with the tip than you might imagine. On that day, I was my own worst enemy. The night before, our manager had put out a call for help. Someone wasn’t going to show up for their Sunday shift and we were a server short. As a newbie to the business, I volunteered. When I did, chuckles erupted from the senior servers. They knew something that I didn’t: The post-worship crowd tended to stiff the help.

My first Sunday afternoon waiting tables will forever live in my memory. I have never been worked harder, treated worse, or made less money in any other job, or on any other working day of my entire life. The real insult was that I was naively excited about taking Sunday afternoon. Being a Christian and having been raised in Oak Ridge, I figured I’d be waiting on people who shared the same values, people I could relate with and talk to while I worked.

I couldn’t have been any closer to heart-break as I learned firsthand the Christian witness being left on tables. As my brief career waiting tables waned, I found myself requesting to work the “smoking section” on Sundays. At least there I would be greeted with a smile, treated with grace, and tipped with charity.

As a pastor of many years, I still look back to those days, wanting desperately to call it a fluke. But I’ve spoken with too many waiters from too many places to accept my experience as an anomaly.

So when the bill came tonight and I thought of all the waiters in the Gulf losing cash to a terrible catastrophe of oil, my mind went back to Oak Ridge. I thought about what a server knows – and how that knowledge speaks so much louder than a suit, or a dress, or a freshly inked salvation track. I thought about Jesus and our mission as believers.

I know there are many who are licking their chops at the thought of a negative blog about believers. They like nothing more than seeing another log thrown on that fire, and that is the very nature of humanity that we’ve been called, by grace, to redirect. This wasn’t written for them; it is for believers. We must accept that we are not only capable of more; we’re commanded to more. If we’ve no grace in our Sunday lunch, even after piously saying it with a bowed head, then we shame the Gospel which is far worse than shaming ourselves.

I love and miss my hometown and I’m excited to be coming back to work, as dysfunctional as that might sound; because come hell or high water, what our servers know about us has got to change.

The American Voyeur

By now, many of you have probably heard the rumors circulating that Gary Coleman's wife, Shannon Price, sold photographs of his final moments in the hospital to tabloid magazines. Whether or not the rumors are true (I suspect that they are), the real issue for me would be that "I am Jack's utter lack of surprise." I suspect many other Americans are probably feeling the same. Imagine two separate, but perhaps equally as damning, realities: one, that a huge percentage of people in this country actually wants to be famous; and two, that many of those who don't would still sneak a peek at dying person to gratify their own personal voyeurism.

I'm telling you the God honest truth here. Sometimes I think I am must be from some other planet, because any similarity I might have with the above defined 'human' population is 100% beyond my ability to comprehend. While it is certain that we must carry some semblance of each other in our respective DNA, I find it difficult to believe that we have anything else in common.

On the first point, the "need to be famous," who'd ever really want it? Would trading everything remotely sacred about life be worth it? Would handing over every last bit yourself to the public be worth the trade-off? In my generation it was Princess Diana's tragic car crash. It's just simply unfathomable, being on either side of those cameras. Taking your last breath while flash bulbs erupt and light reflects off a pool of your own blood. What a hellish way to go, far more torturous than dying beneath a pinned car. Adding insult to injury, even your last breaths couldn't be taken in peace. And please don't get me started on the human parasites on the other side of the lens. In Princess Di's case, those leeches should have been tried for involuntary manslaughter as not a one of them even offered up their shirts to soak the blood. They just kept snapping away, picture after picture; image after gruesome image.

As a pastor of a few years, I can tell you that spending time with the deceased and their families isn't something to plaster across the media. It's a sacred time and as if our culture hadn't already pissed away enough of the sacred through selfishness, greed, and materialist philosophy, our intrusion into the wretched corners of our humanity finds new ways to rear its ugly head. This is the vile fruit growing from the twisted seeds we have planted. This act of human depravity springs up from our new ideological soil, a world view of utter naturalism that rejects the premise that anything in this world is sacred at all.

On the second point, as terrible as Shannon Price's alleged activity may be, doesn't the real blame fall on the shoulders of an American populace which finds no better solace for its many bored and empty lives than to commit a sadistic voyeurism upon other human beings? I am reminded of the way in which serial killers immortalize particular body parts of their victims in hopes of being able relive the thrill of their kills; or the way in which famous figures executed throughout history have been dismembered with their body parts spread around areas of town for all to see. One need not think too much beyond the murder of Neda Agha Soltan in Iran last year and the bystander who managed to capture it on his cell phone video camera, or the numerous stonings of women emerging from the Middle East as they have been caught on cell-phone cameras. These activities, coupled with the American hypocrisy named 'paparazzi,' remind us how little ground we've gained since the ancient Roman arenas and gladiator conflicts. Life and its end are still treated as sport to a great many people.

And such are the offerings of inhumanity littering our supermarket checkouts, right next to Pez dispensers and Snickers bars. Give us another life to follow, and another death for which we are invited to serve as humble spectators. Keep it at a distance though, so the blood won't spill on our shoes.

The Romans had to build 'vomitoriums' into their coliseum seating in order to keep onlookers from puking on each other. And I have to say, as I pause to consider my role as a human person in this tepid and sickened America that we have constructed, that I find myself looking for my own pail at the very thought of anyone wanting to buy Gary Coleman's death pictures, or even look at them.

And I refuse to apologize for calling the voyeurs of wealth and fame anything other than what they are: sadistic, empty shells of humanity needing to reclaim something long since lost. And I must add, that given this morally relativistic age in which we live, I am totally incapable of simply chalking this one up to "Different Strokes."