MEMO to Wall Watchers: Getting Salty with It

God deals with me on a frequent basis, as is the case for any Christ-follower who have fellowship with Jesus on a routine.

We all have our own prayer lists, most of which have revolving requests and bites for intercession. However, some items are solidified in cement. For HiScrivener, that is my family, job, et cetera. But it’s also this blog.

“The Writing on the Wall” is a labor of love, more than I can communicate here. And in an effort to be snarky, cantankerous and effective for exposing the muck and mire in the Church, I search for inventive means to create a headline.

You know, puns, analoguous terms, syncedoches and the rest of the stuff I absorbed in collegiate English. One of those things are using symbols for the cheap laugh. You know, “Oh @#$%” and stuff like that.

The thing about being righteous, you have to do what’s right.

And although it may not be a thing for you – and no worries if not, I got mucho convicted over that recently thanks to God and a dear blogospherical friend I’ve discovered.

This is a blog, if anything, about what’s right. And if I plan to get “salty with it”, it should only be to make people thirsty for the knowledge of Jesus we all share. You know?

And that’s where I want to be with the Wall. Oh, don’t get me wrong… what some of these jackleg fools do in the pulpit (and often in spite of it) deserves to be exposed, but we – the many bricks in the Wall, and others whom I routinely enjoy – can communicate it effectively without pushing the envelope and still bust their chops ad nauseum.

I won’t. I apologize. Thank you for your time. Now, back to the news.

If “The Passion” can do it, so can they “Allah”

Hindus have “Gandhi”. The Nation of Islam has “Malcolm X”. Christians have “The Passion of the Christ” (and so, so much more). Satanists have uh, “The Omen”. Buddhists have uh… hrm… “The Golden Child.” Atheists have um… oh let’s see, “Planet of the Apes”?! Agnostics have “Devils’ Advocate,” maybe. Catholics have “The Mission”… or perhaps “Agnes of God.”  And of course, Scientologists has anything by Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

So, how come it has taken this long for Muslims to have anything to make their prayer rugs curl in Hollywood? Well…

If film producer Oscar Zoghbi has his way, Americans will be soon be flocking to movie theaters to see a film about the Prophet Muhammad and his followers that Zoghbi hopes will clear up misconceptions about Muslims, including what he says is “the understanding that all Muslims are terrorists.”

Now, it has been well documented my feelings about the differences between real, devout Muslims and those lunatics blowing themselves up to get their freak on with 77 vestal virgins.

One seeks to serve a god for a divine path of righteousness (even though not the true God) and the other is known for terrorism, 9-11 and being the spiritual equivalent of the KKK.

In other words, this movie, “The Messenger of Peace” – if done properly – has its place. Jesus was more than a man, but God in the flesh.

And then there was Muhammad, who was only a MAN who tended to stray from the sacrosanct and meandered in the muck of well, carnage.

“The movie will probably avoid or justify Muhammad’s violent and unprovoked battling years in Medina, where assassination and mass murder were done by Muhammad … in order to spread the religion, take control and silence his critics,” Darwish [author of some book noted in the story] said. “We will probably see the image of Muhammad that most Muslims were spoon-fed in their religious education.”

Yeah, about that. Maybe I’ll stick to “Aladdin”. At least they have a friendlier version of the Islam people.

UFC and MMA fans, your shirts are banned from Nordstroms

Catholics in Palm Beach, Fla. are creating a national stir thanks to some popular shirts taking design and artistic license a bit far.

If you are an MMA fanatic (like me), an aficionado of the UFC (again, me) or just like sweet graphic tees (yup, me too), click on the link and view the video. So, what could I be discussing?

Not quite your mama idea of religion

Anyone see those UFC shirts, or other brands with nice graphics such as Affliction, Xtreme Couture and Tap Out? Sure who have, because even Christian retailers are trying to grab the gusto with NOTW, Lion, Truth and anything else found on sites like C28.com. (Cheap plug, but hey, I shop there).

Well, they went too far (as noted in the aforementioned video and this stark pictoral) as the Virgin Mary is no longer holding the Christ child, but rather the sacred winged skeleton?! Huh?

Brooke White, Nordstrom spokeswoman, said store employees began pulling the Affliction T-shirts after a Palm Beach Gardens customer complained. “It was a mistake on our part to have ordered them in the first place,” she said. “We’re fortunate we had a customer complain so we could get them off the floor as soon as possible.”

Ya’ think? Does this pecunious retailer need a Cardinal from the Vatican to issue an edict of non-Catholic-compliance to figure into this decision? And what lovely spin control that is. It took a customer to realize this sanctimonious travesty. Good times.

If it were up to your jaded buyers and um, staff, relics of Christian antiquity would have been thrown into the fire like books on “Footloose” and all to sound the clarion call of the holidays, “Ka-ching.”

I suppose there is a reason why my lil’ Wall Watchers tell me to stray from “ugly boney faces” on t-shirts. Good for the UFC. Not so good for religious buyers. Happy HOLY-days.

GOBAMA: “If it bleeds, it leads” is really about Stigmata

For the past few months, the Writing on the Wall was illuminated with an LED on the Republican Party basically showing if John McCain didn’t bother to entertain the Church like his competition, he would be bothered to keep his tail in Arizona.

Thanks to the Pew Forum, we find that was the case as more than 53 percent of the headlines were about Barack Obama’s faith – some about him being a Muslim, others about him being the Antichrist, but all of it about Christians discussing him… and not John McCain.

The “culture war” issues that have been prominent in past elections, such as abortion and gay marriage, received minimal attention in 2008. The coverage they did receive tended to come in the form of reaction to statements by the candidates and quickly receded without generating any sustained narrative.

Why? Because we – in a word – are meddlesome. And instead of people wanting to discuss the wiles of most on each coast legalizing gay marriage or the intricacies of late-term abortion, we choose to hear the gossip surrounding Nostradamus possibly foretelling Obama as the son of Lucifer or, even worse, the second coming!

Now, that’s politics. And that’s also why the Church was so focused on the BarackStar and not McCain. How could the old man hold a candle to that kind of pub?!

What made the news cycle spin wasn’t the winds of change. It was the old fashioned rumor mill. Check this graph out:

Issues were scarcely what entertained the Church. It was the misguided, haphazard passer-by traffic of the BarackStar’s middle name.

Way to go, Christians! And then to prove how inquiring minds just had to know… you made Sarah Palin’s baby mama issues a strong #2.

You know, the GOP will have a LOT of time to sit back, recollect and reconsider the many ways it lost this election. Among them are:

• Cease & desist with noted evangelical endorsements. If they aren’t calling for the death of all Muslims, they were calling all Catholics whores. Neither are that endearing to swing voters, I don’t think.
• Get younger at that position. Be an old man with a fat wallet in a mid-life crisis. The next time you want to trot out an septuagenarian for cross-country campaigning, make that person has already been president.
• Don’t underestimate experience. Yeah, yeah. Obama didn’t have “experience”, but at least he can handle his own on friggin’ Katie Couric! The one thing he did have experience at was public speaking. You don’t have to be the next “Great Communicator” to sway indie voters, just able to speak in coherent sentences.
• Don’t overestimate one side of a two-sided ticket. No, we don’t vote for the Veeps. But yeah, we kinda do. Biden was a good choice, because he was everything in foreign relations the BarackStar wasn’t. [Then, of course, he hires HER as Secretary of State. Did I miss something?!] Palin? Well, she was an executive… hot… loves the snow… hot… family woman… hot… evangelical… and um, oh yeah, HOT. In short, she was a few fries short of a happy meal, and in this economy, it’s about the whole value meal! And folk get angry about their food.
• Do your homework. McCain wasn’t the country’s first choice. Heck, he wasn’t even the GOP’s first choice. But of course, he wins the nod through politicking and a whole lot of money… and loses his shirt. You see, straight-ticket GOP die-hards, if you don’t wake up and smell what the Barack is cooking, there will be another graph developing (seen pictured here) and that will be reflective of what the country thinks about your and the elephant you rode in on. I’m just sayin’.

Cross Eyed: It’s the most generic time of the year

As you file through the malls aimlessly gallivanting through the sale sections, rummaging through boxes of tube socks & bad ties and pandering to customer service representatives to get that extra three percent off on a $5,000 TV, keep in mind this salient HOLY-day reminder:

Not a lot of retailers care this is CHRIST-mas. The only care that we – the consumer dolts, they call us – spend ourselves into debt purgatory during the “season” and tell Santa all about it.

So, Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family had a recycled idea and have it a genius makeover with this video about “Merry Toss-mas”. And during this economy, it makes cents. Get it? Ah well, the video is brilliant.