We Hold These Truths To Be Self Evident

In the year 1776, just a few short years after attempting to make the largest cup of tea in the history of the world in the Boston harbor, because Americans like big things or possibly other reasons, the American colonies declared independence from the United Kingdom. [The British were unimpressed, inspiring the idiom, “That’s weak tea.”] In doing so, they prepared one of the greatest documents in history, calling it the Declaration of Independence. The preamble of that declaration is one of the best and most beautiful pieces of prose ever written, saying:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

I’m not sure that anyone had ever said that treasured phrase before. See, I love that they said that. They were willing to set out at the beginning of their argument the things that they didn’t think needed proof or explanation. It’s possible, though, that they missed some truths they held to be self evident even before that, like who the “men” that were created equal included.

Things got awkward from there, as the constitution they established for their United States of America allowed for slaves without any right to liberty or the pursuit of happiness – or even life, really. Those rights certainly weren’t unalienable for them. Beyond that, in Article I, section ii, they say that for census purposes, all free people are to be counted fully, but all slaves are only worth 3/5 of a person. But all men are created equal. That’s self-evident.

Maybe it’s that they’re created equal but can be made less equal? Maybe it’s that “men” doesn’t mean slave men?

Maybe the problem is the term “self evident.”

Because all of our arguments begin with the truths we hold to be self-evident. They’re so evident to us that they remain unsaid but at their core aren’t evident at all to the people we’re arguing with.

I’m going to jump in on #TakeAKnee, here. Congratulations if you already got there before me. You’re very smart. Now bear with me, because afterwards we’re going to jump off somewhere different.

People in the United States are currently very angry with each other. You may have noticed. I’m Canadian, so I’m not angry with anybody, although I’m sorry for that. They’re angry because one professional football player decided that during the playing of the national anthem he would go down on one knee rather than stand. He chose to do this because he believed that it would bring attention to the fact that people who looked like him were generally not, in fact, considered by people who look like me to have been created equal with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People who look like me would generally deny that, of course, but based on what was going on in the news at the time, he held that truth to be self evident. Self evident is the fact that this garnered more national attention and conversation than just about any other peaceful way he could have brought this topic up.

It sparked so much debate that the President of the United States called him a son of a bitch, along with the many, many others who have followed up this football player’s lead, taking up the practice of kneeling during the national anthem until all the supposedly equal people who don’t look like me have the unalienable rights that I people who look like me have. It sparked so much debate that people have called for his job and his life. People are very, very angry.

So they argue. For the most part, the angry people aren’t even arguing about what the players are protesting, though – they’re arguing about the form that protest takes.They do it mostly in comments and tweets. And they aren’t hearing each other. They can’t understand… they can’t fathom why people on the other side of the debate can hold such stupid, ill-informed opinions and beliefs.

Maybe it’s because there’s no room for preamble in a tweet and no one reads a comment long enough to have one, and the truths that they hold self evident stand only in the background.

Leaving behind the reasons for the protest, we focus on whether or not it’s okay for someone to kneel during the nation anthem. After all, men have fought and died for that anthem and the flag it describes, and to disrespect that anthem is to disrespect them. And it disrespects the country. And the principles the country was founded on. And we hold those principles dearly. They are sacred. The flag is sacred. The anthem is sacrosanct. This is not an acceptable form of protest. That is self evident.

Leaving behind the reasons for the protest, we focus on whether or not it’s okay for someone to kneel during the nation anthem. After all, men have fought and died for centuries for the right to self expression and peaceful protest against government-sanctioned tyranny; for the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all equal men. The greatest way to honor their sacrifice is to exercise the rights they fought and died for in an attempt to make better the country that the flag and anthem represent. Kneeling during the anthem is a profoundly patriotic form of protest. That is self evident.

And so these two mutually exclusive, self evident truths put pots on their heads and run at each other like rutting sheep until there’s nothing left but pain and a lot of loud, clanging noise. And that is a microcosm of how we treat each other all the time in every debate we engage in, and it’s why we just get angrier instead of understanding each other.

I’m not an expert in football. I’m not really an expert in America or American politics, although I have watched The West Wing through three times and have a Facebook account. What I am a theoretical expert in is communication and Christian religious expression. And that’s why it’s taken me a thousand words to come to what I really want to say.

Every embittered, vitriolic argument that we get into is because we hold truths to be self evident. And they aren’t. Virtually no truth is self evident. I mean, it’s evident to ourselves, but we can’t assume that it’s evident to everyone else’s selves. And that is incredibly difficult to get our heads around. We resist that discovery. We can’t understand how anything so MIND-BLOWINGLY OBVIOUS can’t be understood by THESE IDIOTS who are clearly OBSTINATE AND WILLFULLY IGNORANT. And neither can they. About us.

When the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 1:20 that, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse,” what he’s saying is that the truth of God is self-evident. His qualities. His desires. His very existence. And we, who are Christians, tend to agree. Whether from our observations of the natural world, our studies of scripture, our indoctrination, or our experiences with the supernatural world, we enter into every conversation and debate with that underlying principle: God Is. And not only Is he, but his word and will known. And not only are his word and will know, but they are paramount.

Atheists enter the discussion knowing that the natural, observable world is all there is. There is no Invisible Sky-Man having a floating tea-party with a flying spaghetti monster. Religion is simply an attempt by the elite to control the masses or a crutch for the intellectually and emotionally needy. That is self evident.

And  that’s fine when the argument is about God’s existence, because those core issues are in play. We’re debating those things that we each hold to be self evident, and even if we can’t understand why the other side doesn’t, we understand that the bearing they have on the discussion.

The problem comes during the myriad of other cultural land-mines we discuss.

Abortion.

Same sex marriage.

Trans-gender issues.

In every discussion one side enters in holding certain truths to be self evident. God is. His will is apparent. His will is paramount. [In the case of abortion, that a fetus or zygote or whatever is a fully human person, created equal and endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.]

The other side side enters in holding the self evident truths that personal equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights, personal decision is sacrosanct, and no one can take them away on the millennia old, made up word of some invisible sky-man.

Even within the Christian community, we carry beliefs about the nature of God that inform every position we hold, every nuanced interpretation of scripture, every way we live out our faith in the world. And we hold them to be self evident. Calvinists hold the truth to be self evident that God’s sovereignty extends to willing all that happens. Arminians hold the truth to be self evident that God’s love necessitates free will for his creation.

We all agree that God is Love, but somewhere underneath it is a self evident truth about what that means that others don’t find to be evident at all.

We all agree that love is good, but somewhere underneath it is a self evident truth about what that means that others don’t find to be evident at all.

We assume that our interpretation of scripture is correct.

We assume that other people should care about what we understand scripture teaches.

We assume that if we are just forceful enough, other people will accede to our self evident truths and thereby arrive at the same position we hold that flows from them.

But we keep arguing the position that flows from them and will never arrive at agreement unless we can agree on the foundational principles that under-gird them.

We need to take a deep breath and accept that the truths we hold dear are not self evident. They require knowledge and experience to arrive at. And maybe, just maybe, we haven’t had the knowledge and experience to arrive at the truths that someone else holds to be self evident.

Does this mean we quit talking? Of course not. But it means we have to have a measure of grace for each other. We have to understand that people who disagree with us are not intrinsically stupid or mean-spirited or whatever. They are using a different foundation to build on. Unless we understand their foundation, their building won’t make sense. And we ridicule things that don’t make sense. And that doesn’t make anything better.

So we talk. We share our stories. We share our beliefs. We listen as other people do the same. We stop making statements as if they are self evident. And we do all this with the basic assumption that their argument makes as much sense as ours does. We find out how they got there and discuss that. In order to be understood, we must first seek to understand. That’s useful communication. That’s loving communication. That’s Godly communication. Otherwise all anyone hears is a clanging gong or a noisy cymbal. That’s why the soundtrack of our world is a vast multitude of pots banging against each other and wounded people falling to the ground.

I hold that truth to be self evident.

Advent-ure

For most of us, the Christmas season is marked by more chaos than peace. No matter how old we are, there’s this time leading up to the “big day” that’s marked by increasing expectation. For some, it’s a happy time, for others it can be closer to panic. It seems like it starts earlier every year. We plan, we travel, we decorate, we bake, we shop, we eat, we worry about how much we spent while shopping and how much holiday-weight we’re gaining while we’re eating. Sometimes it seems like we’re bouncing around like a ping-pong ball in a clothes dryer until we’re flung out into the new year wondering where the holiday went!

I’m not railing against busyness or complaining about losing the spirit of Christmas, I’m saying that no matter what we believe, Christmas is more of a season than an event. In the Christian church, we have a word that encompasses that: “Advent.” For us, Christmas doesn’t come suddenly. Each year, there’s a four week lead-up that reminds us, in the midst of the busyness, of the hope, peace, joy, and love that come with Jesus Christ’s coming into our world. It’s a wonderful time of anticipation and celebration of the beautiful mystery that Christ has come, Christ is here, and Christ is coming again.

I’m a bit of a word nerd, so I like to sink into the meaning of things when I talk about them. “Advent” is the same concept that we get the word “Adventure” from. It’s something new coming. Something expected, but somehow unexpected at the same time. It’s a time of profound change where the old passes away and something different takes its place and nothing can ever be the same afterward. Advent is a time that we eagerly anticipate the coming not of presents and turkey, or even the end of insane busyness, but of Jesus Christ.

Once upon a time, the world was Christless, and it waited with baited breath for the one who would make all things new. Then, like a silent ray of starshine, He was here.

That’s what we celebrate. That’s what we still wait for. The old made new. The broken made whole. The greatest gift the world has been given.  He was given when He was least deserved and most needed, and that pattern has been followed in countless lives in the centuries since.

This Christmas season, take some time to ponder what the advent of Jesus Christ means, or could mean, in your own life. Look at the world around you. Look up to the stars. Jesus is coming.

He Gives and Takes Away

I had another tough question come in from a friend and spent some time turning it over this morning. I figure if he’s asking, the answer might be useful to someone else too, so to you, dear reader, I offer my response as well:

Hi ——–,

Your question was, “Can you explain ‘He gives and takes away?’ Since God doesn’t punish, what might he take away?”

That’s a heavy question. It hits a lot of people on a very personal level. It’s also not one that I can give a short, pithy answer to. Although I’m not sure I’ve ever given a short, pithy answer to a theological question. They’re usually wrong.

So, rather than give an answer, I’ll share a bit of thought process.

First, there’s an assumption in the question that God doesn’t punish. There are definitely times in the Bible that God does actively punish, although it’s usually on a national level rather than an individual level. There are some times that God does actively give or bless people in scripture. Let’s hold that in an open hand for a minute.

Second, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” is from Job 1:21. The context of Job is a drama that teaches Jewish people how to respond to struggle and pain. As Job says this, he’s just had three servants come and tell him that he’s lost everything he owns and his family is dead. Job’s response is to acknowledge that he didn’t come into the world with anything, he won’t leave with anything, and God is sovereign over all. He’s saying, “It wasn’t really mine anyway.” This is true. When he says that God took it away, though, he’s wrong. According to the narrative he’s not aware of (irony), Satan took it away with God’s permission as a test – some sort of celestial bet, although God gives permission. So within the immediate context, the statement, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” was wrong, and basing theology off of it is dangerous – as dangerous as basing theology off his friends’ statements that what was happening was his fault and God was punishing him (which was still a very common belief in Jesus’ time).

Third, people want to reduce theology to the simplest possible, most easily digestible form. They want black and white; always and never. What we see in the whole of scripture, though, is “sometimes.” For those who want consistency and certainty, it’s easiest to say “consistently, certainly sometimes.” God is God, and he’s allowed that. What we see is that sometimes God does give. Sometimes God does take away. Most of the time, he lets stuff happen and leaves his justice for later.

So the statement he gives and takes away is accurate. Sort of. Sometimes. 

The greater truth is in the heart attitude behind it, though. We remember that God is sovereign. Everything that we have, whether given actively or inherently is from him. I tremendously enjoy the air he gave me to breathe this morning. Someday I’m going to stop breathing it. I go. Everything I have goes. God remains. God is greater than me. God is greater than my stuff. The mini-lesson found in the following verse, what the audience is supposed to get, is that even though Job thinks God is actively responsible (he’s not) is: “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.”

It’s a statement of peace. It means that whatever our circumstances are, God remains, and we find our worth and being in him. Growing resentful or angry at him for our circumstances is sinful. Worshiping him in the midst of pain is glorifying.

What we should be saying as we echo that statement is that it doesn’t matter who’s fault it is. God is God and God is Good. He doesn’t stop being God in hard times. It’s what Paul echoes in Phillipians 4:11-13 – “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

So maybe it’s God’s fault and maybe it isn’t. Maybe stuff just happened and he didn’t stop it. We still worship, though, because worship isn’t about us and what we have. It’s not transactional. It’s conversational. It’s relational. It’s about who he is and who we are in him.

I hope that answers your question. If not, bug me more. I’m cool with that.

Peace,

Aaron

I haven’t been feeling particularly moved to “blog” lately, but if anyone has any honest questions – not “heh-heh what about this” questions with the intent of trying to trip me up, but honest questions seeking answers, head over to the contact page. I’ll be happy to make posts from them and leave your name out of it.

Repent

I haven’t written for a while. Excuse me while I ramble for a bit.

Each morning (well, most mornings… sometimes afternoons… sometimes I skip it because I’m busy or lazy or in a mood or whatever), I dig into JD Walt’s Seedbed Daily Text. I highly recommend it as a Biblically rich devotional written by a servant of God with a broad intellectual skillset and the heart of a poet.

We’re in the Gospel of Matthew right now, as John the Baptist cries out, “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is near!” As I process some of my thoughts on his thoughts on God’s thoughts, I’m going to piggyback on some of what he said this morning. I’m just saying that this is mostly me, but he deserves credit (or blame, if you disagree) for the direction and it’s only fair that he get it. If you want to catch up, this particular devo is permalinked here.

Way back in the day (colloquially speaking – it was actually an evening), my youth pastor taught one of many lessons on repentance. This one stuck with me for a number of reasons. First, because it was a time in my life that I was in a weird tension that a lot of Christian teens go through… I had “given my life to Christ,” but had developed excellent compartmentalization skills. I’d given the part of my life that went to church and youth group to Christ, but the part of my life that smoked pot and was committed enough to take the time to download porn on a 28.8k modem and other bad stuff remained firmly separate. The tug of war that ebbs and flows and never seems to quite stop completely was at a high point, and I knew that I needed to “repent.”

I mean, I’d pented at least a few times before, and it obviously hadn’t stuck, so I apparently had to do it again.

Repent is a powerful word. It’s explosive, just in terms of its sound. It gains momentum coming off the lips, pulsing out in a way that leaves an impact. It hangs in the air waiting for a response. Even if you’ve heard it a million times, it sits there, slapping at your conscience, demanding acknowledgement, even it it’s just to turn it away again.

It’s also foreign to our modern language. It’s become the exclusive domain of religiousity, and so, while demanding, its also somewhat amorphous and confusing.

The second reason that his lesson sticks in my memory is that he gave a pithy, one sentence definition of repentance that was easy to grasp. He said that, “Repentance is a 180 degree turn from where you’ve been going,” and had kids demonstrate in an object lesson by walking in a straight line across the room and when he yelled, “Repent!” they’d have to turn around and go back in the other direction. It was a good lesson. It was simple and to the point and something a teenager could understand. And so I repented.

Again.

And again.

And no matter how many times I did that about-face and turned 180 degrees from where I was going, my course would slowly wander and I’d find myself heading back exactly the way I had been.

Because he was wrong.

And I was wrong when I taught the same thing.

The problem with viewing repentance as a 180 degree turn from the way you were going is that it still focuses on you and the way you were going. It’s like trying to drive by looking in the rearview mirror. It’s appealing to a self-absorbed, self-addicted people because it maintains our self direction – even if we’re directing ourselves by not going somewhere. It’s our direction – anchored by our former direction – dependent on our vision and our conscience and our experience. Our new direction is entirely dependent on our old direction. That doesn’t work well.

The whole idea of trying to navigate by going away from something is just profoundly stupid. And that’s kind of what John is saying.

The good news is that the true point of navigation is near. It’s not ephemeral. It’s not abstract. It’s among us now.

Yes, repentance is a firm re-orientation, but it’s not reorienting away from something, it’s changing direction to move towards something. As long as we’re moving towards it, it doesn’t matter what we’re moving away from. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done. It doesn’t matter what we’re inclined to drift towards. It doesn’t matter what we… what we… what we… what I.

It matters what God.

Repentance isn’t about us. It’s about him. It’s about Emmanuel. It’s about God With Us. JD says it better than I can:

To be clear, behaviors will change but that change will come from a far deeper place than mere compliance with the rules. It will come from the deep wells of our transformed dispositions, affections, desires and from the Holy Spirit inspired dreams of the beautiful, good and powerfully loving lives we were created to live. To repent means to realign our entire lives to become the remarkable kind of people Jesus would be if he were you and me. Repentance does not start with a stinging self examination of our shame-filled selves. No, it begins by beholding the face of God in Jesus Christ, inhaling the Holy Spirit breathed Word of our own beloved-ness and exhaling the breathtaking beauty of the now-appearing-all-things-are-possible Kingdom of Heaven.

That’s probably enough for today. I’m not done thinking about it. It feels important.

Because there’s something in me that needs to be pent. It needs to be contained and constrained and confined because it has its way with me in a way I don’t like and I don’t like myself when it does. I’ve pent it. I’ve repented it. I’ve repented it again. The only way it’s going to stay pent-up is if God does it. To stop moving away and move towards. To stop being defined by it and get a new definition.

So that’s my prayer for me this morning. It’s my prayer for you. That we be defined not by our failing, but by our calling – by the one who succeeded on our behalf. That we be defined not by what we don’t want to be, but by what we were made to be, and the one who made us. That we be moving towards the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

(Philippians 3:13-14)

Mercy

“Mercy triumphs over judgement,” says James. This is not to say that mercy eliminates judgement, or that which is to be judged is no longer worthy of judgement, but that after judgement comes mercy.

Judge. Judge rightly, and with justice. Know the difference between right and wrong — righteousness and disregard. Dig a deep hole, and pour that judgement into it. Dig it deep enough to fill it to the brim! Once you’ve poured it all out, look at that pool of judgement and admire the rightness of it. Feel confident in it.

Then cover it with mercy.

Spread the mercy on thick. If you don’t have any of your own to put on there, pray for it. It should come from the same place your judgement does, or else your judgement isn’t righteous; it’s self-righteous. Keep adding mercy until the judgement stops seeping through. Keep tending it until something new starts to grow from its fertile soil.

In the end, the judgement is still there, but all anyone should see is mercy.

Put in another way, “Love covers over a multitude of sins.”

I Can’t Stand In Solidarity

I remember being in seventh grade, at a new school, and not terribly popular. I came in halfway through the year with a wonderful combination of introversion and behavioral problems and quickly made as many real friends as I had at my last school (none). I immediately tried out for the basketball team, which would have been a good idea if I could play basketball or had any athletic ability at all, but I couldn’t and didn’t. I did manage to acquire a nickname at least (Reeman Semen, because Reeman has a vague similarity to my last name for kids that don’t bother learning how to pronounce it and bodily fluid,s are funny to middle-schoolers).

Kids are mean.

There’s one day that’s standing out in my memory in particular, when I waited around for a ride after school and a couple of kids decided to play keep-away with my hat. I was an unwilling participant. They were both bigger than me, but most people were. More than twenty years later I still recall running back and forth in increasing despair and frustration, trying to get my hat back before they threw it again, or futilely trying catch it in the air as it sailed over my head. Mostly I remember the look on Matt’s face as his stupid grin turned to shock when instead of chasing the hat he’d just thrown, I kept running at him and punched him in the dick. Then I went and chased my hat while he was on the ground.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

He had absolutely no understanding of why I did it. I didn’t understand why they’d take my hat.

This is the memory that’s rattling around in my mind the morning after at least 127 people were killed in Paris in terror attacks. Maybe it was by ISIS. At this point they’ve claimed responsibility, but they would anyway, so who knows. I’m sure they wanted to, at least. Our assumption at this point is that Islamic extremists did it for reasons. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.

People on my Facebook feed are jumping to either lay blame or “stand in solidarity,” with the people of Paris. Those are both very easy things to do. Sort of. It’s easy to say we stand in solidarity, but I’m not sure we really know what that means. To be in solidarity means to be in agreement of feeling or action. Can we possibly know what they’re feeling right now? I know that whenever I’m going through a brutal time and someone tells me they know how I feel, I’m pretty aggravated. You don’t know how I feel. You know how you feel, and you’re projecting. We’re certainly not in agreement on action, because no one is agreeing on action. Anything we’re feeling or wanting to do is based on our experiences, not their’s. The truth of it is that we don’t understand.

And they don’t understand.

And the people who did it don’t understand.

If I see one more post with a simple reason or a simple answer, I may just punch a dick. As much as people want to make this about religion or economics or refugees or mental illness, anything we blame is oversimplifying an incredibly complex problem (and anyone blaming refugees deserves a dick punch). The nice thing about simple problems is that they have simple solutions. The problem with simple solutions to complex problems is that we tend to be shocked and dismayed to discover that they create more problems.

And the problems we have now tend to be in large part because of simple solutions we’ve tried in the past.

Maybe let’s try not to do it again.

I can’t stand in solidarity with the people of Paris, though, because I don’t understand. I can’t comprehend what they’re feeling or what they’re going through. More than that, I’m almost certain that any (re)action is going to be wrong. Because as much as this feels random and sudden and brutally out of the blue (and for the people that died, it was), it was a reaction too. Which was probably a reaction to something else. Which was probably a reaction to something completely different.

We don’t understand and we don’t understand.

At some point, something happened. They weren’t born wanting to kill. The people that taught them to kill weren’t born wanting to kill. Something happened and we don’t understand.

What I do understand is lashing out. I know, because we want to lash out now. We feel fear. We feel impotence. What they did was wrong. It was. Terribly, horribly wrong. We feel the need to do something to stop it from happening again. I don’t know what that is, but it’s almost certainly not violence. I know that the people who did this are dead, and at the same time hardly any of them are. There’s a large, amorphous group that we can blame, and blaming feels good.

We see this group as having done something to 127+ individual people in Paris. They see a few individuals as having done something grand to a group. As long as we keep thinking, as long as both “sides” keep thinking of people as faceless groups, it’s easy to advocate for simple solutions that fuel cycles of hate.

I’m rambling. I don’t know what to say. I’m in shock. We all are. So let’s take a deep breath. This isn’t simple. This isn’t a kid lashing out because someone was picking on them, but at the same time, people don’t lash out for no reason. They might pick irrational targets and respond in inappropriate ways, but there are reasons.

I know some of the comments I’m going to hear… maybe here, maybe on Facebook, maybe comments on other things. No reason is good enough for this. They (the faceless group) have forfeited their right to understanding. I don’t know. Maybe. But whatever our solutions are, they’re going to make more problems. I mean, I got my hat back, but later on, when Matt’s balls felt better, I got beat. And later, after that, I got him back. Again. Because that’s what happens when we have adolescent solutions.

I don’t know what the adult solution is here. I don’t know if there is one. I know it’s not simple. It probably involves pain and humility and being more like Christ, though, and being down on our knees and loving our enemies even when we don’t want to (like we ever do).

I don’t stand in solidarity with the people of Paris. I can’t. But my heart is breaking for broken people in a broken world that just can’t seem to stop breaking it more. Because I’m one of them.

So I’m #PrayingForParis.

Starbucks Gives In!

In recent breaking news, Starbucks has given in! Christians have won! Christ is back in Coffee Christmas! The infamous coffee chain has acknowledged their nefarious plot, bowing to the righteous indignation of Red Hat Guy and his friend Donald. CEO Joe Starbuck was quoted as saying:

Yeah, they caught us. You can’t hide anything from the internet. The recent influx of angry patrons named Merry Christmas has forced us to give up on the Red Solo plan and come forward with an offering filled with real Christmas spirit.

Satan’s Vessels

Despite a 23% spike in sales due to outraged Dunkin’ Donuts regulars switching to Starbucks to stick it to the man in the name of Jesus, the coffee giant has hired famed guerilla artist Akiro Arukiddingme to bring together an amalgamation of the designs that captured Christmas past for coffee loving evangelicals. In his first media appearance in years, he told reporters:

I believe that Starbucks needed to make a true, meaningful apology in this cup. White on red graphics have come to mean so much to so many people at this time of year, so I have reached into their hearts to give them the vision they have craved. I may be punished for saying so, but Starbucks was ill-advised in using so much red. Red is the colour of anger. White has brought peace, so I combined the white designs of past years. I overlaid them on this year’s red cup to bring a vision of the peace of Christ, because what is in the hearts of Evangelical Christians passes all understanding.

Hailed as the most Christmassy cup ever, Arukiddingme’s design incorporates every Christmas image used before, and should satisfy even the most demanding Evangelical:

In other news, come on, people.

Nothing and Stuff

I know there’s not a ton of people eagerly anticipating posts. On the other hand, there is a person or two that runs across this blog every day. In either case, there hasn’t been anything posted recently and likely won’t for at least another month. It’s not because I have nothing I want to write about, I just don’t have time. I started work at a new church, and when I’m not focusing there, I’m working on renovating a house in that community so that we can move there at the end of August. It’s a lot of hours, and hasn’t left any room for writing. It’s not really in the “scope” of this blog, but I’m lousy at keeping on topic, so I’ll post some pictures and a “renovation story” when we’re done. Then lots of people will find it on Google or Hometalk or whatever and be surprised by a completely irrelevant back catalog of posts! HA!

In case anyone is interested, TAOBB continues to be the best book that no one is buying. I’m discouraged. Life goes on. I’m going to go make stuff different by hitting stuff with other stuff in a house.

Good day.

Book Launch Postmortem

The Art of Being Broken has now been available to the public for two weeks! (get your copy here). It was a ton of work getting to the point of releasing it, with a variety of promotional avenues used. I spent a lot of time on other people’s blogs—authors, publishers, editors, etc.—reading tips and tricks and advice. A lot of it was helpful. I thought I’d share my experiences following that advice so that my journey can be helpful to someone else. The following is the good, the bad, and the ugly from five marketing streams I used.

1. Facebook

The Art of Being Broken’s Facebook page went up several months before launch. On it, I shared a number of quote pics, progress updates, early reviews, and general thoughts about the book. I had almost 140 “Likes” on the page leading up to launch, about half of them personal contacts and half people I don’t know. I also distributed early e-copies to interested pastors in a group I belong to, and got some good feedback.

The Good: I had some enthusiastic supporters that shared a lot of things (as well as the page itself). The reach on the quote pics ranged between 250 and 900 people depending on how it was shared. Adding popular hashtags helped a bit.

The Bad: After initial enthusiasm wore off, there wasn’t as much interaction on the page. Despite the number of likes and shares, not a lot of people engaged in the comments.

The Ugly: When I tried “boosted posts” from Facebook, I’d invariably get shut down for having too much text in the image. Facebook’s policies made using it for advertising very difficult.

2. Thunderclap

Thunderclap is a platform that links with people’s social media accounts to release a timed message. In this case, it was a launch announcement for the book. I’d heard good and bad things about Thunderclap, the bulk of the bad being that it could be really hard to meet their release goals (you need at least 100 people to sign up to use the free service, otherwise they want money). I managed to run a successful campaign, but it was very difficult. Most of it came down to personal requests… leaving public posts on Facebook or requests on TAOBB page got very little action. In order to get 100 supporters, I used my author mailing list from Noisetrade (400 people, more on Noisetrade later), my personal email list (600 people), and my personal facebook friend list (250 people), sending direct messages to everyone. Then I did it again with anyone who I thought a “likely supporter”. Then, as time counted down, I begged my most faithful supporters to beg their friends. With 30 days of daily effort, I got 103 supporters. (Link to campaign)

The Good: The Thunderclap came together with a theoretical social reach of over 182,000 people. That means that if everyone who Twitter follows or Facebook friends my supporters sees the message that means that the announcement goes in front of A LOT of people. The push for the Thunderclap announcement also gave me something to do for the month leading up to launch that felt useful and momentum building.

The Bad: No one knows what Thunderclap is. It was hard work to convince people it was safe and get them to follow the instructions to sign up. Also, the reach is theoretical. I don’t know how many people actually saw it, but of my 250ish Facebook friends, I only actively follow about 25. I assume that most other people are the same. To add on to that, a number of people who signed up for it had the Thunderclap fizzle… it was a dud… it never went off. They checked their pages, and the announcement just never appeared. It seems to be an issue with Thunderclap.

The Ugly: Despite it’s theoretical reach of over 182,000, the campaign generated somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 click-throughs to the sale page, 4 clicks-through to Amazon, and no sales. It was much ado about nothing.

3. Goodreads

I set up The Art of Being Broken with a page on Goodreads—a large social site for people to discover and review books. For pre-launch marketing purposes, I signed up for a Christian Authors review exchange (no quid-pro-quo, but a group of people exchanging books to review without directly reviewing someone reviewing your own. That’s a long way of saying there was no conflict of interest), and a “Goodreads giveaway,” wherein an author offers a number of pre-release print copies in the hopes that the winners will review the book an tell their friends. I listed 6 books, and Goodreads put up the giveaway. There were somewhere in the neighbourhood of 700 entries.

The Good: The review group generated some very positive reviews, although conflicting theology tempered one of them.

The Bad: None of the giveaway books produced reviews, despite Goodreads estimate that over 60% of the time they do. I spent about $60 printing and mailing the books.

The Ugly: On the day the book was launched, one of the books from the giveaway showed up on Amazon, undercutting my price. This was the first print copy “sold.” Since then, ALL of the giveaway copies I sent out have appeared in Amazon stores listed in “new” condition. It appears that it’s a cottage industry to enter ALL the giveaways, even ones you’re not remotely interested in, in the hopes of taking advantage of the authors/publishers and making some free money. I can’t stress enough how broken the Goodreads giveaway system is and would encourage authors to avoid it completely.

4. Radio/Podcast

I’ve got a friend who runs a Christian radio station. He hooked me up with an interview and a list of names to contact at other stations, which produced another. I also did an interview for a podcast with a pastor I met online. I had a good time for all of them, and learned a bit about how to present myself and the book.

The Good: It was great “multimedia” to post, and I felt like it gave some legitimacy to the book for people that might have otherwise written it off as a flight of fancy. It obviously must have reached a fair number of people, as well.

The Bad: I had trouble coordinating the air times of the interviews, and two of them aired before launch. We thought it might help build momentum, but I think that it just meant that any impulse buys that could have come out of it were stymied.

The Ugly: Man, I can be longwinded. I needed better, more concise answers to punch up the interviews. Beyond that, I haven’t heard anything from anyone about them.

5. Noisetrade

Noisetrade is another avenue that many people haven’t heard of. It started as a music-for-tips service, where people could download for the cost of their email address, with an optional “tip” of either a social media share or paypal donation to the artist. It’s since developed an ebook side, with full or excerpted copies available. I had already had a PDF of Worshipping Through John available there for quite a while, and released the first 3 chapters of TAOBB for free there, in the hopes of generating some interest.

The Good: TAOBB was tapped as “New and Notable,” and got a large number (200ish) of downloads through that. Between that and WTJ, I wound up with a mailing list of about 400 people to bug about the Thunderclap and the book launch. I received one enthusiastic email back from a reader, which was cool.

The Bad: The mailing list got an “open rate” of about 40%, which means that most people didn’t even open the emails I sent them. Beyond that, the click-through rate was pretty low. I’m not convinced that I actually saw any sales through this, although there might have been one.

The Ugly: Being featured as “New and Notable” isn’t free. Although it’s only available to works of a certain quality, by invitation, it still cost me $80. Overall, it was probably worth a try, but when you’re out of work and strapped for cash, $80 can be a sizable investment.

Reaching out to “influencers,” (bigger names who’s opinions would carry weight with my target demo) was a bust. Most were simply non-responsive, and the ones that accepted a copy for endorsement became unavailable after a few weeks of back and forth.

The upshot of all this, is that despite fantastic early reviews and enthusiastic responses from just about everyone who’s read it, my first two week’s online sales, in both print and ebook, amount to about 4 copies. As of yet, the only “real” success has come from personal marketing—friends, family, and church members who either attended the launch party or have since picked up physical copies from tables at a couple of churches. A part of me is afraid that, despite rave reviews, this will be one of the “typical,” “average,” self-published books that sells between 100 and 200 copies in its lifespan. I think I can be okay with that… my prayer in this all is that God will use the book as he wants. And as much as I want him to want me to be a best-selling author, what he wants to do with it is more important.

One cool thing to come out of this process is being tapped to do copy-editing and formatting for a self-published memoir from a friend’s father, detailing his service in the Pacific fleet of the US Navy in WW2 and how he dealt with post-war life. It’s really good, and I had fun with the project. It’s coming out in a couple of weeks, and if you’re at all interested in the period or genre, it’s worth checking out. Maybe I’ll find that what I’ve learned through this all will let me help some other people get their vision to print. That could be cool.

Also, buy my book.

6 Things That Christians Mistake for Persecution

I’ve been frustrated at people on the Internet lately. I know, that’s shocking and new, but try to contain your surprise and stay with me. Some of them are friends. Some of them are colleagues. Some of them are random strangers that I theoretically share a belief system with. This post may will probably offend them. They may even call it persecution from within. That would certainly fit with the rhetoric that I see floating around.

There was a great post on cracked.com (home of tremendously well-written and researched articles that people are tricked into reading by dick jokes and cussing) recently about 5 Ways Powerful People Trick You Into Hating Protesters (or Underdogs if you visited before the title was changed). There’s some really interesting stuff about how the majority is made to feel like a threatened  and oppressed minority. It really resonated with me because that’s the way a lot of North American Christians are feeling. The rhetoric floating around the Christian Right is calling it persecution.

I have trouble with that, because (to me) it belittles a lot of things. Sure if you really want it to, it may be massaged to fit a dictionary definition of persecution in that treatment of Christians in North America can at some points be annoying or cause someone to suffer, but I believe that’s because North American Christians have a VERY low threshold for suffering. That’s what happens when we’ve lived in coddled privilege for generations, holding the stick for so long we’ve come to feel that it’s part of our hands. Persecution, like suffering, is a loaded word. When I think about persecution, I think about people losing jobs or being beaten or being sent to prison or killed because of what they believe or who they are. Historically in North America, that’s been how many “Christians,” or at least our “Christian society,” has treated people like blacks, gays, and women.

That’s a hard thing to hear, because no one likes to think of themselves as persecutors. That was what used to happen. It’s not us. At least, it can’t be us because we’re not that bad anymore, right?In the face of damning evidence, one of the easiest ways to make ourselves feel better is to simply call ourselves the persecuted. After all, Christians are being persecuted around the world, so how are we any different? It must be true, because we see it in the news. We’re “persecuted” when:

1. People Vote With Their Wallets

There are Christian businesses that are losing money because people choose not to frequent those establishments. Those people don’t want to give their commerce to people who they perceive as being bigoted and intolerant. Forget for a second that this happens infrequently enough on a major scale that it’s major news when it happens, it’s REVERSE BIGOTRY!

2. People Are Jerks on the Internet

Nothing makes a person happier than being superior on the Internet. There are whole websites devoted to the “triumph of reason” and articles shared around about how profoundly dumb it is to believe in God like a bunch of sheeple. Blah blah blah flying teapot spaghetti monster. How dare they poke at our insecurity to make themselves feel better! Of course, it’s not actually directed at YOU, but it’s adjacent to you and that sucks. It’s not like you’d ever make blanket statements about a whole group of people.

3. We Lose Privileges

Did you know that churches may lose their tax-exempt charitable status if they preach against homosexuality or refuse to perform gay marriages!?! It’s all over the Internet. How is that possibly fair? We’re entitled to special treatment! We must be—we’ve had it forever. So what if by doing weddings we’re acting as agents of the state? They have no business changing their policy to something we disagree with. And taking away preferential treatment to reduce us to the same status as any other group? Preferential treatment is our right! What a hateful mess.

4. We Get Made Fun Of

It’s often said in youth group circles that the worst that can happen if you share your faith with someone is that they’ll laugh at you. Really, though, that’s bad enough, isn’t it? Who wants to be mocked or made fun of for their beliefs? Christians never do that.

5. Ezra Levant Rants About Something

The “rebel commander” and his offense du jour give wonderful self-pity breaks for Canadian Christians. I’m sure the US has their own equivalent (Fox News?). There’s nothing like taking isolated incidents and painting a broad brush conspiracy to marginalize or attack all Christians, to make us feel appropriately threatened and justified in defending ourselves. We should be grateful to people like him for pointing out how persecuted we are, when we otherwise might not have noticed.

6. We Are Held Accountable For What The Bible Says

The Bible says things that people disagree with. That is because they are sweaty heathen sinners who don’t know better. Sometimes that means that our beliefs require that say things or we have to live in ways that they find offensive. Since our beliefs are the right ones and their beliefs are wrong, if their beliefs require them to say or do things that make us uncomfortable or feel “attacked,” that shouldn’t be allowed. We’re the only ones who can do that.

Yes, there was a sneer on my face as I wrote those things. And yes, I actually feel bad about that. I struggle with posting this, because I feel like anyone who agrees with me already knows, and anyone who doesn’t agree with me isn’t going to be swayed by it. Sometimes the Internet is great for venting though, so at least there’s that.

If you’re still reading this far and haven’t shut the tab or jumped to the comments, the takeaway I want to leave is this: There is a difference between Christians being persecuted and A Christian being persecuted and YOU being persecuted. Beyond that, I want to say there’s a difference between things being mildly inconvenient and uncomfortable for you in a distant way and being persecuted. However you want to work your own definition, I can tell you that it’s wrong.

The reason that I know that is this: The persecuted Church grows. Always. It can’t be stopped, and when we are “persecuted for righteousness sake,” it witnesses to the world in a way that draws them to Christ. If we’re persecuted for being jerks, that’s not the same thing.