Movies you Need to See

I love movies and I have a friend Doug who has seen so few movies that it is very concerning. So I made him a list of movies that I believe he NEEDS to see. Some are old and some are new. Some are personal favorites and some are all time classics.

Here it is:

Dead Poets Society

Gone Baby Gone

The Departed

The Godfather I & II

Shawshank Redemption

Lawrence of Arabia

Back to the Future

Braveheart

Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Slumdog Millionaire

Stand by Me

V for Vendetta

The Princess Bride

Mystic River

No Country for Old Men

Philadelphia

The Searchers

The French Connection

Goodfellas

Schindler's List

Die Hard

Patton

The Battle of the Buldge

Kelly's Heroes

West Side Story

Jerry Maguire

Bridge Over the River Kwai

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Dead Man Walking

The Dirty Dozen

Gangs of New York

My Christmas Break to do List

Instead of writing my last paper of the semester I think I will share with you my Christmas to do list (complete with pictures to make it a little more aesthetically pleasing) that I will hopefully accomplish over break.

1. Natalie Portman has my heart. I really want to see her new movie Black Swan.
2. In my humble opinion, it is not Christmas until this movie is viewed.
3. I have been reading this book for awhile and am determined to finish it over break.
4. Probably the movie I am most excited for is the Cohen brothers remake of a John Wayne classic. Josh Brolin is one of my favorite actors these last few years and obviously Matt Damon and Jeff Bridges aren't bad either.
5. Would love to see this, especially in 3d.
6. Most days I am not a Mark Wahlberg fan at all, but this might just be the role he was born to play, since, he himself has a really great story of rising to success. Anyone who loses that much weight as Christian Bale did for this role is clearly taking his job seriously and sure to deliver. Plus everyone loves a rag to riches, nobody to somebody, down and out, to the top boxing story! Isn't that what Christmas is really all about?

7. Go to the Hofbrauhaus House in Newport. It is a really great place to drink beer.

8. My body is falling apart and I am out of shape like I have never been in my whole life. After being really lethargic and catching up on sleep, I plan on starting up Insanity and getting my heart healthy again.
9. Finish my application for Iliff School of Theology in Denver.
10. Finish my application to Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
11. Continue reading Irresistible Revolution and posting on a discussion group with my young life guys.

The Future of Youth Ministry

This semester I had my peace studies senior seminar on youth, violence, and peacebuilding. Overall the class was an enjoyable experience and I learned a ton concerning youth and their capacity to be agents of peace, victims to injustice, and even instigators of violence. My research paper focused on the relationship of youth's faith and their agency to become positive forces for social change. Instead of posting all 15 pages of that boring paper I have here an op-ed that is more of an opinion piece derived from my research I entitled the Future of Youth Ministry.

enjoy, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

The Future of Youth Ministry

Let me introduce myself as a Christian, at least I think so. I am always perplexed when I hear people ask the question: when or why did you choose to become a Christian? I don't remember anyone ever laying out choices in front of me. My parents never asked if I would like to seek enlightenment through the Buddhist path. Nor did they ever consider if I would be more excited to go to temple on Saturday rather than to a Sunday Catholic mass. Only to fall asleep, doodle and color on the program, or when I got into my teenage years to sit there and ponder the blatant contradictions and startling hypocrisy.

Yet here I am today, 21 years old trying to read the Bible and pray daily, I have chosen internships at churches and non-for profits over other corporate opportunities, spent my summers at ministry camps, and spend almost 15 hours a week hanging out with high school kids. My heroes are people I am sure you have never heard of; N.T. Wright, William Stringfellow, the Niebuhr brothers, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy Day and Shane Claiborne.

So how did this happen? I could tell you the sappy details of the years of my life that I spent searching for an identity, chasing after avenues to find meaning and purpose, and most of all longing to feel fully alive. But you have heard all those fluffy conversion stories before. The short story is that I did not make a "choice" to become a Christian but ran into the God of the Gospels when people in my life kept showing up and loving me like I had never been loved before.

But as a religious studies major and peace studies minor conversion is not what I am interested in exploring. What I am intrigued to understand on a scholarly and personal level is the connections so many, including myself, have made to intertwine faith and social engagement. Since this connection occurred, my life has been built around a few passions: youth, the academic study of religion, and a passion for combating injustice.

The following is a recommendation for the future of ministry based on my personal story, my experience working with youth in various faith-based communities, and scholarly research concerning youth agency for positive social change and capacity for genuine interaction with their faith.

I set out to understand the dichotomy between youth that are consistently marginalized and therefore never able to fully participate in shaping and changing their context, alongside the connection between youth's faith experience and how they engage socially and politically. Youth are the recipients of the context they live in and are not considered participants in creating and changing the social or political landscape they find themselves in.

In a faith setting, there is a general sense that children and youth are incapable of having a genuine, legitimate, or significant faith experience compared to adults. As well, youth are generally not considered to have the agency to be peace builders or forces for positive social change. Frankly, in religious settings youth are only thought to offer the community an example of “blind faith.” While in the political and social realm, youth are not active participants in creating and changing the structures and systems that often oppress and marginalize them.

Both of these unfounded notions dictate the methodology of how faith-based communities, faith-based non-for profits, ministries, or churches engage youth. These communities that work with youth in the hopes of transforming youth’s lives according to Christian principles have no problem initially attracting youth. What they are failing at is successfully creating a sustainable relationship with a faith community and personal transformation that lasts past the initial emotional response.

This is because youth are longing and yearning for something more than the narrow and personalized Christianity they are recipients of. In her article Subversive Spirituality in Youth Ministry at the Margins, Susanna Johnson says, “...the theological framework of faith based organizing is a socially engaged spirituality shaped by a biblical foundation, and eschatological orientation, and a political responsibility.” By “eschatological orientation” she is suggesting that youth are longing for their faith not to be a spirituality solely emotional and personal, but rather she suggests youth’s faith becomes significant, long lasting, and socially and politically focused when they find themselves in a community that is horizontally interpreting the Bible and living out future hopes and promises for a just and peaceful world in the present.

Susanna Johnson, other scholars of youth ministry, and myself agree that contrary to popular understanding, youth have the capacity to interact with their faith in a meaningful and creative way. They also are able to draw on it as a tool to understand injustice in the world and for their faith to become a source of motivation for actively creating a more just and peaceful society.

This is my story. My Christian faith had always been a very personalized and narrow experience that was more focused on trying to become a better person than anything else. As I began to ponder the social and political implications of what I was reading in the gospels, I was able to see that my faith had so much more to do with combating political injustice, asking questions about where my food and clothes come from, rejecting violence justified by national narratives, and working to equalize the drastic inequalities in the world than simply being a good person.

Through various media outlets, the internet, all forms of social media youth are constantly being made aware of the stark inequalities, injustices, and the suffering in today’s world. Hence, why more than ever youth possess an urgency and yearning to transform the world into a more just society. The raping and destroying of the Earth has been brought to light because of the climate change controversy and has been discussed over many dinner tables and even implemented into the education of youth kindergarten through college. This serves as an example of how injustice, suffering, violence, and environmental issues are in the forefront of the minds of youth.

I have often suggested that youth are prophets because they are marginalized like most prophets are and maybe more than anyone else are capable of witnessing, interpreting, and drawing conclusions about suffering, violence, and injustice. Their voices for change cry out but are often stifled by social institutions and religious hierarchy that perpetuate the status quo.

The future of youth ministry depends on faith-based community’s ability to intertwine the two realities I have identified. Youth not only have agency to be positive forces for social change but are yearning to feel alive by doing so and they long to interact with their faith in a meaningful way free of hierarchy that expects them to only accept dogma. If youth ministry is able to create platforms and communities that allow youth to connect their faith with the responsibility to engage socially and politically to create more just and peaceful societies, youth ministry will be successful in transforming the individual and the community as a whole to look more like the life and community laid out by Jesus in the Gospels.

A Rant Inspired by a Eli Wiesel Quote

I have posted this quote before, but I am using it for a paper I am writing and have been reminded on how much I love it. Eli Wiesel knows the reality of the evil in this world more than anyone and remains faithful. In my often very comfortable world I am not forced to deal with life in a meaningful, deep, or "below the surface," fashion.

I think this why I am so drawn to communities that are ridden with injustices and visibly oppressed. Unless you become completely numb to your context you have to ask questions and are forced to reconcile the way you think about God with the pain and suffering that is upon you or others in your context. You do not have to dig through layers of separation, meaningless stuff, and layers of comfort to get to the real rub of life. I forget. I forget that the majority of the world does not live in the same physical and economic comfort or peace that I am blessed to live in. Blessed? but.. are the poor the blessed? So often we thank God for the comforts his provides us; food, clothes, friends, family, a house, money to pay the bills. But are those who are not guaranteed the formerly mentioned on a daily basis the blessed ones? In their need is space to rely on God, to see God tangible move, and ultimately more opportunity to know better their creator. Which I have often thought is the ultimate goal of following Christ.

But. Few would disagree with me here (or maybe they would and please do). But it is hard to disagree with the empirical evidence in the Gospels that what I am saying is not something at all profound or new but a simple truth that I stole form some guy names Jesus (like we say in young life some guy...).

So what happens, why do I not live in to this reality more? Serious mental justification gymnastics.

Rather than following Jesus into the uncomfortable we use Jesus to justify what is comfortable.

Shoot. I was just going to share a quote and I haven't even done that yet. I am not even sure if this has relevance to where my rant ended up but it was what the original spark of this conversation I decided to have with myself and then share with you.

Who says that the essential question has an answer? The essence of man is to be a question, and the essence of a question is to be without an answer?

But to say, "What is God? What is the World? What is my friend?" is to say that I have someone to talk to, someone to ask a question of.

The DEPTH, the meaning, the very SALT of man is his constant desire to ask the question ever deeper within himself, to feel ever more INTIMATELY the existence of an unknowable answer.

Eli Wiesel, The Town Beyond The Wall

I Believe

I found this great book that is a collection of short writings, essays, and letters from religious leaders that address issues of peace and non-violence. From Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King jr. to Thich Nhat Hanh, Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, etc. all have incredible insight concerning the relationship between God, society, man, violence, and peace.

A section from this book entitled I Believe is what I wanted to share with you. I read with a pretty critical eye most days anyways, but I especially had my critical eyes focused when I came across this piece called I Believe. Yet, I found that my theology agrees with almost every line of this poem of sorts. It is really long, so I highlighted that lines that really stuck out to me.

Enjoy.

I Believe

I believe in God

I believe in Jesus Christ

I believe in Man.

I believe in God as the infinite power which is the reason for my being.

I believe in Jesus Christ as major revelation of God.

I believe in man as the house of GOd, created in his image.

I believe that my finite person is incapable of ever comprehending the infinite, yet God reveals himself to me daily through myself and relations with others, through the lives of men and women throughout history, and ultimately through the life of Christ.

I believe that through Jesus Christ, the man from Nazareth, God reveals to me the life I should live.

I believe God lives within me and all of mankind.

I believe the basis of life is love: love on oneself, love of one's neighbor, as as Christ has said, love of one's enemies.

I believe we are meant to live in harmony.

I believe that when we seek this harmony with the motivations of love, we glorify God as he has commanded.

I believe in the basic law of God: Thou shall not kill.

I believe in the basic law of God: Thou shall have no other gods before me.

I believe that since God lives within each of us and all of us, the service of man is the service of God; therefore the destruction of man is the profaning of God.

I believe in non-violence as witnessed by the life of Christ.

I believe the laws of man must become secondary when they conflict with the natural laws of God.

I believe life must be a witness.

I believe this witness must be total, a commitment of all one's talents to the glory of God.

I believe this witness must work to overcome national, racial, economic, political, and cultural divisions to unite mankind in peace.

I believe the way of God is the way witnessed by Christ which is the way of peace.

I believe peace is found through its pursuit.

I believe God is revealed through the pursuit of peace.

I believe to search for the revelations of God is to work to know God.

I believe to seek God is to know God.

I believe God reveals himself through revelations of the soul.

I believe the soul is revealed through the process of the search for it.

I believe the search takes many individual and collective forms.

I believe it is found in the development of creativity which is within all of us, which we must work to free for the collective use in the service of man, is again the revelation of God.

I believe it is most found in the service of my fellow man as witnessed by the life of Christ, the man closest to God.

I believe just as Christ's life is a witness to the laws of God, my life must be a witness to my search of him through my service to man.

I believe therefore that I could not kill another man nor could i in good conscience serve or involve myself in any system, nor support in any way, the creation or continuation of any process which seeks to or results in the killing (I would add suffering) of another man.

-Perry Muckerheidi

Spurgeon Quote

I forgot how much I love Charles Spurgeon. In the bulletin at this morning's service this quote was offered in the front as a source of reflection. Enjoy.

"It has been said that "the proper study of mankind is man." I believe it is equally true that... the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls Father. IT is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned it its infinity. But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe. And, while humbling and expanding. this subject is eminently consolatory. 0h, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning.

-Charles Spurgeon.

Church w/ Tim Keller

I am the only when left of my family staying with my aunt in NYC. I stayed behind to visit Union Theological Seminary on monday and fly home monday afternoon. I decided to go to Church this morning and the only Church or pastor that I am familiar with in NYC is that of Tim Keller's. He probably falls under the category of a minor Christian celebrity because of the many popular books he has written. Most notably, The Reason for God and The Prodigal God. The name of the Church is Redeemer Presbyterian and the congregation has 6,000 thousand members. The church has a unique way of gathering in that there are many locations (not churches but auditoriums and other halls) that Tim Keller makes his way around to through the day and gives the sermon at each. The service I went to must have had 2,000 very diverse people packed into a college auditorium. It was as solid classical service outlined by an old school liturgy but capped off with a enlightening sermon from Tim Keller. The sermon was entitled To Know the Living God and here are some high lights that I took from it:

God is knowable. Therefore, what is it to be in fellowship with God? or to know God or to walk with God?

Knowing God is a heart experience but not pure mysticism. There is an objective body of truth that can not be ignored, i.e. the Bible and the clear commands and clear overarching themes that dictate the Christian life. Hence, you can not create your own God from a feeling or whatever else that does not come from or align with this body of objective truth.

What does it look like to be in fellowship with God? The following are the six different aspects Keller offered as to know if you are walking with God:

1. To know God is to delight in his presence. You know you have really experienced God's presence when you cant stand living in the absence of that presence.

2. Intimate 2 way communication or exchange.

Prayer - you know you are not in fellowship with God if you treat him as an ATM.

Word- you know you are in fellowship with God if you are reading the word and asking questions and learning in a way in which lead you to adore God more, repent, etc. Are you reading the word and learning about yourself, God, and the world?

3. When you are in relationship with a person they influence your life and you lose certain freedoms. Therefore when you are in fellowship with God there is a loss of freedom but also a gain of a different more joyous and eternal freedom.

Probably the most accurate way of knowing if you are walking with God is if God is messing up your life.

4. You love and desire Christian community

5. Anybody who knows God wants others to really know God.

6. Organic growth from the inside.