Who Knew You Could Smoke a Cigar Box?

This is Glenn Kaiser jamming at Cornerstone this year on his homemade guitar. It's a cigar box with only three strings but sounds like two guitars. He's using a slide with one finger while playing cords and soloing with the rest. Love that tiny pignose amp!

Is Katniss Compatible with Christ?

I noticed the Hunger Games is coming out on video, and I have been thinking about putting my two cents in the ring. My son and I went to see the movie when it was on in theaters. He had read the book and I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.

I know the movie doesn't follow the book exactly, but I understand that the premise is the same: young people are forced by the powers that be to participate in a game of survival where they must kill or be killed. This struck me as post modern ethics. What do you do when you can't escape doing wrong? Christianity can't help you because it's simplistic and outdated and thus can't survive when the hard questions whack it over the head. Or can it?

I think the Christian response is and always has been not to participate. There are examples of whole families and communities dying together because they wouldn't play along in the arenas of ancient Rome. The Romans booed the Christians because they wouldn't give the audience the blood sport it wanted.

When Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place that seems to be redemptive, until you realize that she will have to kill someone else's brother or sister to save her own. Thus, the Christian response would be to make the aristocracy kill you themselves. That way they can't pretend it's a game, "And may the odds be ever in your favor."

Now someone may say, "Well you can play your own game and thwart the aristocracy." They may want to see you run through by gladiators but what if that makes the gladiators feel their own gladius? Its only self defense after all. But we must remember that it's being artificially imposed.

What if your playing Galaga, and suddenly the game informs you that instead of alien bugs its going to be real people flying at you with deadly aim. I think we would have to turn it off and let the consequences be what they are. This is what makes the story unsatisfying. The Christian version was told in Quo Vadis whose author won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905.

Preach the Gospel at All Times and When Necessary Eat More Chicken

Today is National Chic-fil-A Appreciation Day. There has been quite a dust-up between some Christians over participating for fear of further alienating homosexuals. That is a legitimate concern. We don't want to put stumbling blocks in the way of the gospel.

But what if the offense is already part of the gospel? Part of the gospel you say! How so? Well I would suggest that what the Bible says about marriage is good news for everyone. God made us in his image with a human nature that flourishes in marriage between one man and one woman. Any other arrangement is destructive to human nature.

The gospel restores us to these God-defined relationships. This is grace! So I believe that Christians should cheerfully participate in proclaiming the gospel with Dan Cathy and Chic-fil-A by supporting their business against those who have pitted themselves against it. This is for the sake of the gospel, homosexuals and all of us who need it, and the betterment of society which needs more chicken and less chickens :).

Christians should also participate in Chic-fil-A day, because first amendment issues of freedom of religion are also at stake.

The reason Mike Huckabee started the movement to support Chic-fil-A is because Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A president, said, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” which indicates one man and one woman till death do us part. This prompted city officials in Chicago and Boston to oppose Chic-fil-A restaurants from opening in their jurisdictions. This has been termed viewpoint discrimination and rightly so. We must support freedom of religion and conscience from the oppression of those who would falsely define gay marriage as a civil rights issue.

Christians shouldn't fear the politicization of the issue either. It is possible and healthy to distinguish church and state but impossible and unhealthy to distinguish religion and politics. God has given us both the realms of church and state, by which he has commanded us to transform his world. So we should go out equally motivated to fulfill the great commission and the cultural mandate. In fact, they are complimentary.