Moving on

For the past two years, this blog has been in hiatus. Why? Well, I moved to Turkey would be one excuse. I left my old job where I could focus on such topics as connecting faith and pop culture would be another, but those are both just excuses. Nothing was stopping me from continuing to write for this blog, showing connections I've seen in various television shows and movies.

Another excuse, that is still truth, is that I have had a difficult time keeping up with American culture. We don't have a TV in our apartment. I've been to the movie theatre less than five times while in Turkey.

Life changed in a big way and I chose to not make time for this blog, whose readership wasn't amazing, but it was committed and I let you down if you are among those people. I am sorry.

Alas, I do not plan to relaunch this blog either. I'll keep what content is here so that people looking to find the poetry of Treebeard will have a source.

What I am relaunching is my commitment to connect faith and culture online once again through a different medium.

I have agreed to become a contributing member or more appropriately "one of the geeks" for the website Faith and Geekery.

This site seeks to do what I have always sought to do, connect faith and culture. As you can tell, their particular or peculiar taste is toward things you might label as geeky, for example: science fiction, fantasy, technology, comic books and comic book movies.

If you read this site in the past, you probably are interested in at least two of the aforementioned topics if not all of them, so I would encourage you to take a look at Faith and Geekery. There's a lot of solid geek and faith news that gets posted as well as some excellent commentary on trends and culture in the faith and geek worlds.

I have agreed to undertake this work for a number of reasons. Firstly, I really enjoy writing about faith and geekery. I can't say I miss it because I have been working on a book project involving faith and the shortlived TV series Firefly.

I've also been compiling a book of devotions connected to Paul's writings, many connected to geekery.

Secondly, I think God, for whatever reason, gifted me in this area, to see the connections between faith and other things. Wasting that would be unwise.

Thirdly, in honing my skills as a writer, I find it best to work in a team setting of some sort. I do this with my sports interest on a site called Sports Central. Where I'm expected to submit an article every month. I get a reminder of this with a bit of guidance on which sport to write on and I have a week to submit. I have written for Sports Central every month for the past four years.

If I can do that for sports, why not for connecting faith and geekery? It only seems logical. Faith and Geekery has three current contributors and I will be their fourth, posting once a month at minimum.

So between those two gigs, our travel blog - Turkish Crossroads and my personal list of novels, short stories and devotional books, I think I should have my hands full with writing for quite some time.

Thanks for reading. I hope you'll follow me and join me on the other sites.

Traitors Welcomed as Crew

Have you ever been tricked or deceived by somebody? To me it’s typically only happened as a joke, there was the time Billy put my favorite coffee mug in Jello this summer, it was only on Monday that my older brother called me. His wife is pregnant and they had their first ultrasound appointment Monday morning. He called to tell me there were two heart beats…I fell for it like an idiot, getting excited for the prospect of twins and he simply laughed and said, just kidding, only one. He then proceeded to call my mom to try the same line on her.

Being deceived is no fun, even when it’s a joke. Yes it can be funny, but for the most part, it leaves us as the deceived feeling gullible, silly and just plain stupid. What happens when the stakes are higher?

The story of Judas betraying Jesus is well known to many of us. Judas, for 30 pieces of silver, hands Jesus over to be arrested, put on trial, beaten and eventually die via crucifixion. Judas however, did not see such things. He hanged himself when he realized what he’d done.

Hopefully in our lives, we won’t be faced with life or death situations of betrayal.

A brief explanation of the clip you're about to see. Firefly is a show that follows around the crew of Serenity, a spaceship of the Firefly class. They are a group of smugglers, thieves and other interesting professions. Two of the more interesting characters are Simon and River Tamm, a brother and sister. Simon is, well was a doctor, and a very good one. River was held captive by the government because of her amazing brain powers. Simon’s job throughout the entirety of the series is to try and cure River and keep her safe. They are fugitives with quite a hefty reward for their capture. Tempted by the reward money, Jayne Cobb, the ship’s muscle man, attempts to betray Simon and River for the payoff.

Jayne’s attempt doesn’t quite work. All three of them are captured Jayne has to help Simon and River escape and the ship’s captain, Malcolm Reynolds helps to save them as well. Through all of this, nobody knows Jayne’s act of betrayal. He thinks he’s gotten away with it scot-free, but well, you’ll see what happens.

Clip...(It would help to watch the entire Firefly episode of Ariel.)

Jayne betrays Simon and River and isn’t honest about it, but we as the viewer (if we’d seen the whole episode) know what he did, even if none of the other crew members do. Simon in fact thinks Jayne was the hero of the day, and tells everyone so.

Mal, however realizes what happened and turns the screws on Jayne. This scene is one of the most defining for Mal. We know from previous episodes that he takes care of his crew no matter what, but we see perhaps a glimpse of why in this scene. As the conversation goes:

Jayne: “What are you taking this so personal for? It ain't like I ratted you out to the feds.”
Mal: “But you did. You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me. But since that’s a concept you can’t seem to wrap your head around, you got no place here. You did it to me Jayne and that’s a fact.”

It’s very similar to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:31-46, especially verses 44 and 45.

Jesus takes all of us in as his crew, even the least of us. We are valuable to him, valuable enough to die for. We don’t know why he loves us so, but we know that he does. This love is reflected in Mal for his crew. No it is not a perfect love. It is not Godly love. But we see how he takes ownership of his crew and when they feel pain, he feels pain. When they rejoice, he rejoices. When they are betrayed, he is betrayed.

Thanks be to God that Christ has taken ownership of us.

We don’t choose our own crew. We may not even like our crew, but they are our crew and so we watch their back and we love them. Our crew is the Body of Christ.

It is unclear to me if Mal was planning on actually letting Jayne die.

Or if Jayne’s repentance may have moved Mal to let him live.

Or I suppose it is possible that Mal knew the repentance was coming and was just waiting for it…

In this scene, Mal once again lives out his own words from an earlier episode Shindig “Mercy is the mark of a great man.” Jayne deserved to be treated like a traitor, but Mal treats him like crew.

It is the same with us and Jesus. We deserve to be treated like traitors, like sinners. We have done nothing to deserve God’s love. We’ve only done things to deserve his wrath, hatred and punishment. But God treats us like his crew, like his children, like his friends because of Jesus death and resurrection.

Jesus takes that punishment we deserve and is treated like a sinner, like a betrayer, so that we God’s creation might be treated like Sons and Daughters of the Heavenly Father.

That is indeed how we are treated, being gifted with eternal life in death and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

This clip reveals a certain beautiful balance of Law and Gospel. Mal lets Jayne know the truth: that Jayne’s actions are unacceptable and are worthy of death. That is the Law at its best. But it doesn’t end with Law. It ends with Life, with a second chance, with forgiveness, with precious Gospel.