Live Generously

The blogosphere is a funny place. Not that such a statement needs proving, but allow me to submit to you this little piece of evidence:

About a month and a half ago I spent a few days in Tijuana, Mexico, with my church doing a house build with Amor ministries. Before leaving for the trip, I wrote this post and called it “House Building for Dummies”. In the post I talked about the trip a little, but I mainly, in a very tongue-in-cheek way, talked about how I was a bit skeptical of my own ability to actually positively contribute to the building of an actual house that would be safe for actual humans.

Six weeks after the trip, I can tell you that, on average, about ten people get directed to my blog each week after doing a Google search for “house building for dummies”, or something close to that. To those who have ended up on my blog as a result of such a search (and there will probably be more of you now that I’ve referenced it again), I apologize that I’m not more helpful. I must admit, however, that the fact that there are human beings looking for a “for dummies” guide to BUILDING A FREAKING HOUSE is mildly concerning. But it makes me laugh, so that’s ok.

The Onion has done it again. Recently they had a great story about a Padres game getting “sunned out”, and now they’ve got this great story about a planned merger of two San Diego institutions.  I can’t wait to go visit. I want to be a writer for The Onion in my next life.

I realize that I currently have two blog posts that I have said I will complete at some point (one of which I said I hoped to finish last Tuesday night), and I will complete them as soon as I finish my church history midterm…but in the mean time, I found a funny article on The Onion that made me happy to live in America’s Finest City. The Onion, by the way, is an absolutely hysterical satirical ‘newspaper’…and as this article helps us to remember, there is an ounce of truth in every joke.

The article in question can be found here, and I promise I’ll be getting back to writing with at least the appearance of depth very soon.

Admittedly the video that I link to below is a few months old, but I just came across it for the first time thanks to a brief write-up it received in the most recent issue of Relevant.

I should say that if I had to make a list of the public figures I would most like to have a conversation with, Stephen Colbert would easily crack the top 10. No really, he would. And I don’t mean the character he plays on TV, I mean the real guy. While I very rarely watch his show (don’t have cable), I find it to be smart, clever, and pretty dang funny. More than that, I find Colbert himself to be both a brilliant actor (his character is amazing), and a fascinating individual (an opinion derived from both his show and the few out-of-character interviews I’ve managed to find). He talks about God quite a bit on his show, often in an either irreverent or tongue-in-cheek fashion, and yet maintains that he is a Sunday school teacher at his church.

In the interview below, he talks with Philip Zimbardo, a professor at Stanford (and conductor of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment that anyone who has ever taken a post-secondary psychology or sociology class has studied ad naseum), about his book The Lucifer Effect. To make a long story short, Colbert seems to slip out of character towards the end of the interview and gives Zimbardo quite the theological lecture. While he uses a rather unfortunate selection of words at the end, the preceding 30 seconds provide an interesting dose of Arminian theology…not exactly standard fare on the late night talk show circuit. The reaction of the audience to his outburst is also intriguing. My interest in what is actually going on in Stephen Colbert’s head has been further piqued.

I couldn’t figure out how to post this video directly onto my blog, but you can find it here.