Kony 2012 part 1

Is this the very definition of "viral meltdown?"
Within the month of March, the following happened:

1. The Kony 2012 film by Jason Russell of Invisible Children launched March 5.
2. 120 million people watched the film. (This is not terribly unusual for Justin Bieber, say, or JLo, but they have their half billion hits after a year for a four minute music video; Kony, at almost 30 minutes, got 40 million hits after three days without gyrating pop stars).
3. Enthusiasm for exposing the misdeeds of the world's Public Enemy Number One and his capture became important to millions of people who couldn't find Africa on a globe, let alone Uganda on a map. His five year old child, Gavin Danger Russell, was trending large on tumblr.
4. The inevitable naysayers hit back hard: Invisible Children sends only a third of its donations to its area; the film is a propaganda piece that oversimplifies the importance of Kony and is inaccurate in many of its fundamental details; its maker, Jason Russell, exploited his child Gavin in order to further his own career as a filmmaker; and, naturally, that since he is a well-groomed, attractive Christian man, he is obviously a closeted homosexual.
5. Jason Russell had a nervous breakdown. He was filmed in a clothes-less rant in San Diego, and was taken to a place where he can heal. His wife said he was upset by the negative reactions his film caught, and that it will take some time for him to heal.

And we still have four more days in March.

In days past, someone would have to spend a life-time getting famous, based on a body of artistic or political or scholarly work. Their downfall could come quickly, but often it would take a court case lasting months, or be tried in the public square over weeks.

Russell's rise to fame and meltdown happened in about 15 days.

What is a Christian response to all of this?

First, and foremost, we need to pray for Mr. Russell and his family, that he recover his mental and physical health so that he is able to be a good father and husband again.

Second, our prayer is that the message - catch and capture a bad guy - is not lost in the maelstrom.

In the following days, I'll look at the actual film, and what Christians can learn from this phenomenon - and what pitfalls we may avoid.

Old, Hebrew or First?

Pastor Brian, Tracy and I are feverishly working to complete our lessons for tomorrow night's Old Testament lectures - Part 2. We taught the first seven hours of class last month, and that got us to Ruth. Tomorrow night's classes will finish the rest.
But something is bugging me.
Old and New.
Why do we call the Old Testament "Old?" Not that there's anything particularly wrong with being old. Older means wiser, right? Old means experienced and mature.
Except in our culture.
Old means worn out and finished. Kaput. Retired. Ancient. Outdated. Even Scripture says, "You don't pour new wine into old wineskins." Why? Because things that are old are not useful for moving forward. That's a nice way to put it. A plainer way to say it is that things that are old are useless.
Do I agree that old things are worthless? Heavens no. And not just because I'm getting my first AARP invitation this year.
But in our culture, image, as they say, is everything.
Biblical scholars are fond of a new way of referring to The Old: Hebrew Bible. I like this quite a bit, since it reveres and highlights our Jewish forebears, honors our spiritual ancestors, as well as the religion of our Savior.
The problem with it is that if you sell a Bible with "Hebrew Bible" at the front part, what do you call the other part? "Christian Bible"? No, because the whole thing is the Christian Bible, and then we would be in the same pickle as the Mormon church and have to call it The Book of Christian. Shudder. And if you have a book with Hebrew Bible and New Testament that would be very confusing and beg the question "Why is one part a Bible, and the other part a Testament?"
Instead of Old Testament, why not call it The First Testament? That way your Bibles would say "First Testament" and "New Testament." The First nomenclature would stress that God's initial covenant is not outdated, worn out and worthless; far from it, it would stress that it's prime, preceding the New. Not co-equal with the New but of great importance, since it was first.
The folks who would have the most problem with this is dualists: if you have an Old, you must have a New. If you have Hebrew, you must have Christian. If you have a First, you must have a Last. And nobody wants to read the Last Testament, except greedy heirs.
It's either that, or change American's view toward Old. And that idea is nothing new.

Enough of meaninglessness; let's talk semi-colons!

Enough of meaninglessness. Time for grammar!
(For those of you who think that grammar is the height of meaninglessness, fie on you, and a pox upon your house! I would put forth "placement of the salad fork" as the height of meaninglessness.)
My love for the semi-colon is well-known. When I was a part of the constitution and by-law task force last year, my love for the red-headed step-child of the punctuation family reached epic proportions. Even now, when we read the Nicene Creed in church, the members of the committee will seek me out and exclaim, "Did you see those semi-colons?"
Of course.
I was reminded of this last week when reading a friend's Facebook link to The Three Uses of Irony, by theoatmeal.com and from there discovered to my delight the following article. Enjoy.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

Meaninglessnesses.

Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless!
All week, without any prompting from me, Ecclesiastes has come up in natural conversation four times.

1. Ecclesiastes was the topic for one of the Tuesday Women's Bible Study leaders.
2. A youth came in with a very good question: Why does it seem that everyone's totally okay with the fact that we're all going to die?
3. Another youth asked how Jesus would be treated by the church if he were to come back today, which naturally led me to the Grand Inquisitor sequence of Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, in which Jesus is brought before the Inquisition and, well, I don't want to spoil anything.
4. I received a book in the mail with 25 short stories about The Christ, including The Grand Inquisitor.

While you may be thinking that none but the first have anything to do with Ecclesiastes, you would be wrong, for in this book lie the seeds of existentialism, of which Fydor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky is the acknowledged progenitor.
Is there a message for Christians in Ecclesiastes? Absolutely. As Lutherans, we love the third chapter, set to music by the Byrds 40 years ago, that there is a time for everything. We love "a cord of three strands is not easily broken." We also believe, teach and confess that the message of this holy book is found in 8:15:

So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun.

But the verse right before that one is this:

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.

But then how do you reconcile that message with individual passages like "For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow?" (6:12)

Pretty hard to paint a sun with a smiley face on the cover of this book. How do you set the bravery of Stephen the martyr, much less our Lord and Savior, against a passage like 9:4b "even a live dog is better off than a dead lion"?

Sure the rest of the Bible consistently warns against riches, and here as well: "Whoever has riches never has riches enough." But is this the same author who spent a third of his book of Proverbs extolling the virtue of wisdom and another good chunk of it praising hard work, who then writes here: 

So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.

Despair.

That's a strong word, used only a dozen other times, and only once in the New Testament when Paul reminds us that we are crushed, persecuted and oppressed, but never in despair, because despair implies "no hope."

So what's the answer to this anomaly, this section of seeming despair in a book that's promised to give us hope and a future, as it says in Jeremiah.

First, we don't gain our theology from the Wisdom books. If we did, "Spare the rod and spoil the child" would be part of the 10 Commandments, and we would be reading passages from Song of Songs in church on Valentine's Day. 

Secondly, I reminded my class that Solomon - if he is the author - probably wrote this later in his kingdom after he'd seen the ravaging effects that his capitulation had on God's people. This could be a frank appraisal of a kingship gone bad. Look what good all that wisdom did me, he says.

Third, we're not absolutely convinced that "eternal life" was a for-sure done deal for 10th century Hebrews. Their "salvation" was from oppressors, not necessarily for eternal life.

And finally, as I told the class a few weeks back, "If you're a pessimist, you're not crazy." Every village needs two things: an idiot and a curmudgeon. While the Bible is lacking an idiot, I would put forth Ecclesiastes as the Norwegian bachelor farmer of Scripture: "Ah what do you know? You think that's a new idea? That's as old as the hills. Your cat died - well, sure. That happens. You put your faith in the economy? The stock market? HA! you think you're so smart? Let me tell you something, you don't know nothing, sonny. Nonsense. All of it nonsense."