I Ain't 'fraid o' No Snakes!

As I was watching Andrew Callahan's new documentary "West Virginia Snake Church", my first impression was one of bemusement. Typically the litmus test for good theology is one of consensus. Year one bible students are taught in their hermeneutics classes that passages in the bible are interpreted against the grander narrative of scripture, which has also been well documented by theological consensus over the centuries. Oftentimes, Christian cults like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, will develop theology off of hard-to-interpret passages, or simply fabricate them, like the practice of Sealment (see Doctrine and Covenants 132:19). Despite being contradicted by Jesus directly in Matthew 22:23-33, the grander narrative of the New Testament, with the Kingdom of Heaven and the new reality of life after he returns and puts all things right, describes a radically different conception of what "Heaven" is. So, when I watch a documentary about a church than handles venomous snakes, drinks poison, and uses scripture to justify it, my eyebrow is raised to new heights. 

 The passage in question that "justifies" snake handling is Mark 16:15-18 which reads:

[15] And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. [16] Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. [17] And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; [18] they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (ESV)

This is a part of the larger ending to Mark that appears to have been added at a later date, likely as a way to help tie up the ending and make it less abrupt. Did Jesus say explicitly that those who believe will be impervious to poison and snake venom? Perhaps. Is it more likely that this is symbolic language used to describe the greater transformation in the hearts of believers? I think so. And even if it was the former, there seems to be a greater concentration of miraculous things occurring in the early days of the church.  Without getting too in the weeds with eschatology and spiritual gifts, suffice to say, the grander narrative of the New Testament actually elevates unremarkable actions, like hospitality, forgiveness, worship, and service, to a much higher regard than healing, speaking in tongues, or prophecy. Therefore, we shouldn't tailor theology, or even denominations, to cater to things that ultimately come from God to minister to a specific time and context. 

That said, I was watching a documentary about snake handling Christians, endangering themselves and others with bad exegesis, and seeing in them the fruit of the Holy Spirit. What? 

What's going on here? 

This situation made me think of Paul's words in Philippians 1:21. "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" is often quoted to justify those who martyr themselves for the faith. (I can only imagine that this verse is thrown around a lot in The House of the Lord Jesus church in Squire, West Virginia.) But the immediate context of the verse is in regards to Paul's on-going work of Evangelism and subsequent imprisonment. He also qualifies the statement with thought that, while it would be better to die and to be with his Lord Jesus, he has a duty to shepherd and train leaders in the early church and lead by example. How can you do that while drinking poison and handling snakes? Yes, Paul also was bitten by a Snake in Acts 28, but Paul's mission was not yet finished. God would have him preach the Gospel to Rome first and then die a martyr's death. These abilities, if temporarily granted, were for the specific purpose of evangelism.  

Andrew Callahan frequently notes, the obscurity of Squire, West Virginia. And I'm not surprised that in an area with those living on the fringe, that the people there would adopt theology that matches their immediate context. While it saddens me that their expression of worship would include something that repels people from the gospel of Jesus, it makes me glad to see a community of believers with their lives transformed by Christ. If God is doing something there, I would hope that their boldness ventures beyond their church doors and into a community of desperate and hurting people. 

Remembering Wink

Back in 2016, a few days after Christmas, I was in Escondido with Alyssa and our other dog, Copper (half Shiba Inu, half American Eskimo). At the time, we thought that Copper needed a companion to keep her from going stir-crazy while we were both out and at work, so we visited the local Humane Society and looked over a few dogs. Of the ones we found, there was a corgi mutt of some kind that we were really interested in, because who doesn't want a corgi? Of course, when we came back the next day, after thinking it over, the dog was gone.  

Not wanting to leave without anything to show for it, we looked for the least threatening dog we could find and settled on "Schmoopy" a chihuahua / rat terrier mix. 

I thought the name was funny at the time, as if Justin Roiland named him as he was passing through. Schmoopy had a characteristic floppy right ear that looked like an eye winking, so I just threw out "Wink" as a possibility for a name. My wife didn't have anything else in mind, so she agreed.

The strange thing about Wink was that, of all the dogs I've ever encountered, he was the sweetest and most mild mannered one I'd ever known.  Whereas Copper barked any anything that moved into her peripheral vision, Wink was silent. In fact, the singular time I heard him bark was when I was taking him out to go to the bathroom and he saw a cat minding it's own business on a table across the road. It was a stalky, grey beast of a feline, at least twice as large as him. He froze in place after taking notice and made a low, and muffled, "hhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrr." I was astonished. 

I later found out Wink was adopted and returned at least two times before we took him home. Why? He was the easiest dog. He neither chewed, barked, nor bit. In many ways he was more like a cat than a dog. He just found a spot on you and curled up. That's all he ever needed. (I actually found a newsletter of a "successful adoption" story featuring Wink with one of his original owners.)

Eventually, after having Eowyn, we had to re-home Copper. She was beginning to get food aggressive when Eowyn would crawl on the floor and we thought it best to get her into a home with older children before she tried to bite her. Copper is still alive today according to Facebook, living her best life as an obese troublemaker I would assume.

When we adopted Wink, we were told he was maybe 4-5 years old, however it became clear that he was probably a little older, given how quickly his hair began to grey. When he died, he was probably 13-14 years old. Or 15-17 years old. Who knows? 

But Wink was having trouble this past year. He was getting confused, walking around in circles and getting stuck under chairs. The symptoms pointed to Canine Cognitive Dysfunction, which presents almost like dementia in humans. After a lot of thought and tears, we decided to let him die with dignity.

I had no idea what it would be like putting down a dog. Even now, the vet visit feels so surreal and strange. I was lead into a quiet room decorated with inspirational quotes and votive candles. As I cradled Wink, the reality of what was about to happen began to coalesce. I was already crying, but now I was scared AND crying. I thought about the pain he would feel as they stuck a catheter into him, or about the confusion he might have felt stemming from my emotional distress. There was a jar of Hershey kisses with a sign next to it saying "No dog should ever go to heaven without having tasted chocolate." 

I wailed like a madman when they gave him the shots: one to calm him, the other to kill him. A thought occurred to me that, maybe, I had made a mistake, that I was crossing a bridge not yet finished. I held him, shaking, crying out, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry..." over and over again. Alyssa and I were both sobbing, absolutely inconsolable. When the vet gave me a hug, she asked me if we wanted to stay with him for a few more minutes, but I looked down and I was just holding a dead dog. 

That was the moment that I recoiled. I said, "No... I... I can't, please take it away." And we had to get out of there. 

The act of putting down an animal is still an enigma to me. How it affects us, what it does to our hearts. So much of pet ownership is exploitative. We own the animal, the animal exists to please and affirm us. That we anthropomorphize and impute human qualities to the extent that we do, it's proof enough of the bond's power. We wish something could love us unconditionally, so instead of God we erect an animal in his place to do so. In the lead up to Wink's euthanasia a friend of mine told me, "if you let your dog live, you are keeping him alive for you, not for him." Without reservation, I would say that I agree. 

The strange thing about all this: after we left the vet, Alyssa told me that she's never doing this (owning a dog/putting a dog down) again, and yet I still want one. There's a hole in my heart where he once was and it wants to be filled. 

I do pray though that God in his grace would do me favor of bringing Wink back to me in the new heavens and new earth. He has no reason to, as dogs don't have immortal souls. (Neither do we, for that matter, as the idea of a soul comes from Plato and not the bible.) But I would like to think in his kindness he would bring him back into existence for me. 

Until then, thank you for being such a good boy, Wink. 

    

The Theology of Bootleg Toy Stores

Every so often my daughter will come home with a new toy she picked up from the Awana store at my church (not a real store), which she received by redeeming participation points. (For those who don't know, Awana is a weekly youth program for kids that want to learn more about Jesus and his gospel.) For instance, bringing a pair of sturdy running shoes nets you 300 points. Bringing a bible nets you 100 points. Bringing the Awana workbook gets you 200 points and so on... (These aren't actually the point values, just an educated guess.)

Imagine your reaction going into a toy store and seeing a bunch of cheap things that are mass-produced and made of frail plastic. Now, add some creative intellectual property infringement and this would begin to paint a picture of the Awana store. (Sometime, I will have to ask the church where they get the toys... I'm actually kind of interested in where they come from.) 

These are some of the things I saw on offer:

• Chevron Car Mascot toys from the late 90s
• unfinished 3D printed toys
• paper kaleidoscopes 
• Overstock McDonalds Happy Meal toys. 
• mini Double Bubble gumball machines
• rubber bouncing balls
• bootleg transformers
• bootleg Mario Kart remote control cars
• miscellaneous toy donations

The asshole, twenty-something in me that picks up these anemic baubles shouts, "it's the garbage of a consumeristic society. Literally the waste product of globalism!" But upon closer examination, those kinds of ideas are just as much the product of a wasteful capitalist society as well. So, way to be a critic, Stuart. Meanwhile, the kids playing with their new prizes are having a blast.  

Last month I read Mark Russell's satirical comic Billionaire Island, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in prescient commentary on the imminent collapse of the middle class. In the book, among many other points, Russell's takeaway is that Western societies equate intrinsic worthiness with an assigned monetary value. So it's to be expected that I would look at a cheap soccer ball, off-gassing VOCs and think unfavorable things. The way the kids reacted to the store though taught me an unexpected theological truth: our value is not baked in by society or popular opinion, it's baked in by God himself. We are valuable because God values us. Just like a kid playing with a 3d printed dragon egg with bad layer adhesion, God enjoys us with the same intensity and approve of us. 

Now, could the toy be better? Could it be worked on and improved? Just like Christ imputes to us his righteousness, my kid could begin to repair and improve upon the toy she got from the Awana store. She could repaint it or reinforce the joints or improve the electronics and make the toy what it was originally intended to be. In other words, useless toys meant for destruction are given new purpose and saved from "Gehenna" (ie. The Tajiguas Landfill). It's not a perfect analogy for God's purposes but it was what came to mind after some reflection. 

 

"Material Writing" and Extended Simile

 As I have often said before, most of my best ideas come at the most inopportune times... so here we go. 

When writing fiction, rather than over explaining a character and/or setting, it's best to simply describe the scene through the lens of another object. In the case below, the city being described is like a precious stone, but with impurities and imperfections in the rock. This is a common thing to encounter when buying jewelry or, specifically, an engagement ring. The clearer the stone, the more it's valued. It doesn't really matter how big it is. You could buy a big ass diamond for $800 dollars, but the inside of it will look like hot garbage. So, readers aware of the concept can import that knowledge and context into the narrative. You can also find ways to play with the overarching theme and introduce wordplay, like Vorlin's ambitious "palming" of Hypox. Thieves and jewels go together like peanut butter and jelly, so naturally all this imagery synergizes. Read the below and you'll see what I mean: 

The port city Hypox shimmered like a gem in the noonday sun, it’s rust colored buildings at odds with the turbulent azure waters, crashing against it’s docks. Every day, thousands of bandits transited through the city gates like motes of corruption, reducing it’s refraction, pedaling ill-gotten gains and baubles stained with dried blood.

The king’s seat of power, the Opal Dome, was nested in the center of Hypox, like a guard on watch in a prison. It alone seemed to repel the objectionable and profane, despite itself being a white-washed tomb. Long ago, a great king forgotten to time erected it. The dizzying effort expended to accentuate every minute detail of it, softened by centuries of dust storms and permanently caked with the ash of conflict.

When Vorlin crested the dune and beheld Hypox, he smiled. It would very soon fill the palm of his hand.  

The Difference Between Building a Sand Castle and a Real One

There are common limits imposed upon human imagination and memory. For instance, when I sat down to write this, I burned about 25 minutes trying to remember the name of a French intellectual that was fascinated by the level of sensory information that the average human processes on any given day. As I recall, he sat down in his study and attempted to write a journal that was as exhaustive as humanly possible. Whether it was descriptive, or completely a work of stream of consciousness, I can't recall, but he gave up a few days later after writing some absurd amount of pages. There was just too much to account for. It was the "a picture is worth a thousand words" kind of dilemma. Anyways, I eventually gave up trying to remember his name. If you happen to know it, DM me! 

I very much enjoy open world games, and there are several elements that collectively contribute to their rendering authenticity. Geography, for one, must be close to scale. The density of props and interactable objects in the world must be placed with believable randomness. Structures and buildings must be unique, each with distinguishing features. NPCs must move and act in the environment with convincing variation. And transgressing the given social order must be met with a realistic consequence. Few games, if any, have offered something with this degree of detail and specificity. For the majority of titles, it’s just a crude representation of reality.

Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation describes Disneyland (Chapter 1: The Precession of Simulacra. Section 4 - The Hyperreal and the Imaginary) at length, with it’s segmented districts throughout the park, and how each area represents a microcosm of Americana. The folly, of course, is that each zone is a simulacra, a representation in a series of representations, where the land being represented has no relationship to the original reality. Likewise, when game developers synthesize real life locations into an open world gaming experience, the dev team is inevitably relying on a shared conceptual toolbox of degraded signs and simulacra. The result is that something is always amiss. For instance, in games like Assassin‘s Creed: Odyssey the player is able to sail around the entire Mediterranean world, but each island the player accesses is just a crude distillation. It takes 36 minutes by car to travel from The Temple of Apollo on Naxos to reach Mount Zas, but the player can reach the same location in about 5 minutes in-game, if that. Likewise, the island of Crete (Messara and Pephka) in-game can be ran across in under a half hour. In reality, the island is 260 km long.

Naxos IRL

Environments can have both intensive amounts of detail, as well as a complete lack thereof. It's just a matter of perspective of what's important and what our own attention spans can accommodate. If a player was given the task of traveling 2000 miles of real distance in real time, then nothing would get done. Flying from Los Angeles to London, even going 570 miles per hour, takes about 11 hours. Driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas takes approximately 5 hours to traverse almost 300 miles. In the latter example, most of that space is the Mojave Desert with little to no variation in geography and landmarks. As gamers, we hunger for a sense of scope and realism, but I don’t think we consider how vast (and empty) the real world actually is. With this in mind, the above characterization of Naxos is to the gamer's benefit, even if it thwarts true realism. 

Lately with all the work at Electi Studio, I have reacquainted myself with Fantasy and Sci-fi literature, and the sense of grandeur they evoke. Granted, playing a video game involves the player as a participant in a simulated space. A player can pick up items, traverse obstacles, read and recognize visual cues and text, yet the level of immersion is compromised, once something becomes out of place. In books, at least, the author is selectively futzing with the reader's focus, directing their attention to different aspects of the world. The reader's prerogative is to then fill out the space procedurally with novel contextualization. "A hero walks in to a cave..." Immediately, the reader populates their mind with the image of a cave. "The hero takes a seat on the ground and unpacks a bag of provisions..." The reader then synthesizes the contents of the backpack. Is the cave damp? or is it dry? The author doesn't describe this, but the reader is already feeling the spring water soak through their jeans as they sit. This was my nightmare when working on Hobgoblin as a consultant. I would read something that Mike wrote and the procedural rendering of the scene in my mind would commence, oftentimes differing from his. This is completely normal, obviously, but the work gets complicated when what you see in your head needs to conform to what the author sees in theirs. Mike might describe a colossal cave worm erupting from the ceiling of a cavern, but what recommendations I ultimately make need to conform to his vision. And that's hard, honestly. It's like describing, on a color-blind person's behalf, what red looks like to them to someone who isn't color-blind.  

Worldbuilding aside, in the case of video games and the available technology that is used to render approximations of  the real world, the game developers appear sympathetic to the average gamer seeking better immersion. The invisible walls and poor draw distance are just pragmatism on the developer's part, so that we can enjoy our jaunt in their world without our consoles and PCs catching fire. Technologies like Unreal Engine 5, which can render details so minute that the proprietary term for it is "Nanite", take clever shortcuts to sell the illusion of  detail at varying distances and perspectives. And with AI powered GPUs now saturating the market, other more innocuous details can be generated on the fly, like textures and props. So the response on the part of game developers is not without concerted effort. (Nanite has already been around for some time, even. Consider the level of detail in this demonstration. It was taken 4 years ago!)

Epic Games

It's my hope that someday we can get something truly "photoreal", although a subcutaneous chip capturing sensory data in the gamer's occipital lobe would be pretty rad... Yeah, that would be nice. Or! a table-top gaming experience that relies on our own imagination to build out an AR game board? One can only dream! 

The future is wild my friends!

"Everything must GO!" and Other Federally Mandated Holiday Sales

 

Juneteenth is a relatively new holiday, which is something else. My usual experience with holidays is that they just exist and that’s the way it’s always been. Since time immemorial, since the foundation of the world. God said, “Let there be light… and great savings this Memorial Day weekend!!!”. It’s strange to welcome to the fold another day in the calendar year where I can look forward to NOT going to work. The strange countenance of holiday cognizance, one could say! (Maybe. I think that’s how words work…)

 

Holidays remind me of the Sabbath spoken of in the bible. The concept of the sabbath has it’s own unique meaning in Judeo-Christian tradition, but the cultural milieu of the Ancient Near East helps to further contextualize the kind of mindset someone had when they entered into sabbath with their deity. For Judeo-Christian adherents, it would have been a time of important reflection. To observe with one’s whole being the establishing of God’s order and dominion over the created order, including all the implications that such a thing implies. It meant that one shouldn’t “work”. Why? Because God provides all one needs to sustain life. The profound act that God “rested” on the 7^th day of creation meant that, unlike the pantheon of Gods in the Ancient Near East (who constantly meddled with the affairs of Men and wrestled for our affections and allegiances), God’s creation was self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. He didn’t need shit from us.

 

Contrast this, however, with our holidays that the federal government sprinkles over the calendar year like Salt Bae.

 

I think we’ve lost sight of the original intention for the “holiday” in the United States. (I can’t speak for other countries, which have their own history and traditions.) It’s an unfortunate consequence of capitalism, which reduces everything to a dollar value. Holidays become sales events and “days off” to disassociate mentally and physically from the rigors of a 40-hour work week. To claw back control over unraveling responsibilities that lie neglected in whatever crevasse we stuffed them into last. We don’t stop to consider that Labor Day was meant to observe the dignity of workers and the organizations they founded to enshrine the things we take for granted, like 8-hour work days and a two-day weekend. We don’t stop to consider the fallen dead on Memorial Day, or stop to thank a member of the military for their service on Veterans Day. (I’m sure it’s on your mind, but for how long. Do you spend an entire day, thinking about it and reflecting on it?)

 

Juneteenth is significant to me because it’s a new holiday, and its novelty has not yet yielded to indifference, or overexposure. The origin of the day is also incredibly fucked up. (It should be a moniker of shame that it took a whole two and a half years after the initial Emancipation Proclamation for slaves to actually be set free.) Juneteenth is to be a sobering day, and a time for reflection in general. We must come to terms that people who claimed to know the gospel, profit motivated textile and agricultural industries, and elected officials had to be forced by military action to see people as human beings, not as property.

 

So, in summary, it’s my hope that we can look more critically at holidays and what they stand for. As we await the Star-Trek future of post scarcity, or bide our time until the collapse of civilization in a resource war*, I will try to do this in earnest, at least. These days should be seen as more than just the sum of their promotional sales or a missed opportunity to clean out the garage.

 

*That is, unless Jesus returns before either of those things to set all things right in his perfect justice and equity.

The Theology of Star Trek

I would say that I'm a Star Trek fan. 

I grew up watching the TOS original films, as well as the TNG original films, often being dragged to see them by my dad, who seemed to love Star Trek and yet have no concept of the deeper meanings at play in the films. (All things, of course, that my dad was happy to decry while memorizing Rush Limbaugh talking points.) Incidentally, it wasn't until my late 20s that I actually sat down and watched TNG and began to see the layers of social commentary. But with that, also, the reverence for the deep lore that encompassed at least 50 years of pop culture was on display. 

But it naturally presented a crisis to my Christian faith.

Episodes like "Who Watches the Watchers" (S3E4) and "Devil's Due" (S4E13) were easily identified as  critiques of religion, and the power that such systematic ignorance holds over people. But also Picard's own distain for religion  is showcased bit by bit throughout the show in occasional one-off statements. His love of xenoarcheology also emphasizes his fascination with pre-warp culture, but serves to juxtapose the Federation's meritorious, utopian ideals with the wistful contemplation of archaic societies, and where they inevitably went wrong. (Obviously, there are only a handful of explicit critiques of faith and faith statements, but the tone is there.) 

The crisis then came when I started pining for a better world, amidst the insanity of the Trump presidency, and started considering what a world focused on equity and progress would look like. Would Christianity survive the discovery of other life outside of our solar system? Would warp drive be the catalyst that would drive us to the conclusion that our geocentric religions were hopelessly, and cosmologically, narrow? I felt compelled to agree. I even called one of my pastor friends and just broke down crying because I didn't know what to do. 

What was interesting though was, when I took a step back, I started to notice that the Federation shared some aspects of God himself, particularly as an agent of change through immense power and authority. The in-universe lore often indicts the Federation for its complicity in cultural homogenization. As races are inducted into the Federation as charter members, they are required to give up a lot of petty geopolitical squabbles and demonstrate their innate desire to change for the better and embrace cooperation. But in this act of assimilation, aspects of the charter race's society are ultimately diluted. This can be seen as a pragmatic outcome however, because the end result is a net positive one. 

Where the Federation collides with Christianity I found out (through the help of some fellow fans that also happen to be Christian as well), is the "born-again" aspects of conversion, where converts are given new desires and new motivations (empowered by the Holy Spirit's act of regeneration and ongoing sanctification). Much like pre-warp civilizations, which are concerned with sectarian struggles and larger geopolitical conflicts, non-Christians have their own innate cultural biases that drive them. Christians do as well, where our old biases conflict with our new desires to love God with all our mind, body, and soul, and our neighbor as ourself. The difference lies in the reorienting the Federation/God provides when their members lose their way. The Federation is indeed a utopian ideal, but it works alongside a "fallen" galaxy in an effort to demonstrate a better way that emphasizes cooperation and advancement. The reason why the Federation can do this is because of it's symbolic (and literal) power. Even if the Federation "loses," its underlying principals are so self evident that outsiders must concede that the path the Federation strives for is worthy, as exemplified by of all it's charter members. Of course this is an imperfect analogy, but its able to at least broach harder philosophical questions like, "If God is so powerful, why is there still suffering in the world?" (I could reply, "Well, God is working through the agents of his inaugurated Kingdom, which (ideally) endeavor to provide a peace that surpasses all understanding through their ministries.")        

To be honest what spurred this sudden explosion of bad writing was the idea that, eschatologically speaking, I identify more with the Preterist position that the "end times" already has mostly happened (ie. the destruction of the Second Temple in 70AD and Nero serving as the historical anti-christ). Additionally, I was trying to conceptualize the idea of we, as Christians, living in the messianic age, but also having to bear witness to all the horrible shit that goes on in the world every day. The United Federation of Planets seemed to fit the framework pretty well. 

Anyways, I hope you all at least mildly enjoyed my exposition. You can tell me how much you disagree in the comments. ;)