Tag: culture

culture, life, religion

Virtuous Vanilla Lip Balm, Jesus and a Prostitute

Once upon a time, a Christian entrepreneur got carried away and created a line of Jesus themed personal care products. The idea was to present “to-cool-for-school” unchurched types with an image of Jesus as irreverent, hip and ironic, and thus more acceptable. The result was this:

 

Of course, it’s possible that you’re not much of a flavored lip balm sort of guy or gal. Perhaps a “Looking good for Jesus” shopping bag is more your thing. Or bubble bath, hand cream, coin purse compact mirror and mini kit.

If you’re more of a dirty feeling person, you can check out the related line of products called “Wash your sins away” which includes towelettes, breath spray, lip balm and, of course, bars of soap.

Unfortunately for our stalwart business person, cautious Christian bookstores were uncomfortable with the pseudo-sexual overtones of the whole thing. They refused to stock the product line, despite an endorsement from a well known Christian Patriarchy leader. Desperate to empty reclaim the use of his third garage stall which was filled with product which had no place to go, the business person was forced to look for other markets. Eventually he found customers among the sort of small boutiques who cater to the “too-cool-for-school” crowd.

OK, I totally made that whole story up. Although you have to admit that my “failed evangelization tool” story is shockingly plausible.   Continue reading “Virtuous Vanilla Lip Balm, Jesus and a Prostitute”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter5 Comments
bible, religion

Let’s All Be Fundamentalists!

Statement of (The Upside Down World’s) Fundamentalist Faith: There is great disagreement within the church regarding whether the bible should be taken literally and if so, which parts must be taken literally. Unfortunately, this ongoing disagreement has often kept us from paying enough to those verses which we can all agree ought to be taken literally. So, although there is freedom in Christ which allows … Continue reading Let’s All Be Fundamentalists!

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter12 Comments
prayer, religion

Judging Christians

What would happen if we all stopped judging each other tomorrow? Would everyone start sassing the boss, not realizing they could be fired? Would families start roasting each other for dinner, knowing no one would judge them for it? Is judging properly the only thing that’s standing between us and a world of complete chaos (as opposed to the one we currently inhabit!)?

Or to put the question another way – what effect do we think we are having when we observe for others what is right, wrong, correct, mistaken, etc? I’m going to go way out on a limb here and guess the actual effect doesn’t exactly line up with our desires. Somehow people rarely react to being told what they are doing wrong by saying, “gosh – thank you so much for telling me. I’m going to get right on fixing that now and devote the rest of my life to making up for all the pain I’ve caused you.”

The reality is that being right is no big thing – anyone can do it. The kids I met in juvi knew the difference between right and wrong. But it’s really hard is to actually do what Jesus tells us to do: “don’t judge.” Now I know I just lost a bunch of y’all there. The last time I said we should take his instructions not to judge more seriously, if not literally, the comments had a good number of “but Jesus said judgmental things” and “we have to judge – it’s judging in a way that condemns another human that we can’t do.” All arguments I have made myself in the past. Only I actually tested the not judging thing. And found out that in order to judge properly, we need first need to learn how not to judge. Continue reading “Judging Christians”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter6 Comments
culture, current events, humor

We’re in the Last Days

Forget the re-settlement of Israel or all the weird astronomical alignments happening this December, if you want real proof that we’re in the last days, look no further than the spread of Prince Harry’s nudie shots around the globe. Can you imagine telling people in colonial India or America that the day would come that people everywhere would see the Prince of England in the … Continue reading We’re in the Last Days

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
blog stuff, Bloggy Linky Goodness, culture, current events, religion

Bloggy Linky Goodness

Well, it’s been a slow week around here as you might have noticed. Next week will be different, but you’ll have to head down to the bottom of this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness to find out more about that. In other news, I shaved my legs and pits for the first time in months. Most exciting thing to happen around here in a while, I tell ya!

But I do have some good writing/reading for this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness to share with y’all:

Radical Practice Needs Deep Roots in Doctrine I love synchronicity – great minds think alike and all that. This beautiful post by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove at The Everyday Awakening explaining the gospel, suffering, atonement theology and more reads like if you took my own posts on suffering, the church and the sacrificial death of Jesus and put them into one post with much more skill and clarity than I have. Really great stuff. Continue reading “Bloggy Linky Goodness”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
culture, current events

“High Priests of Caesar’s Court”

I came across a post by Greg Boyd today which I think makes a great follow-up to my post earlier this week – Our Faithless Culture Wars – that I hope you will go read. The choice excerpts for me:

We sadly assume our highest calling is to be the high priests of Caesar’s court, telling it how God allegedly wants it to spend its money.

Of course, being the high priests of Caesar’s court means you’ve got to get into the messy complexity of this court. How do we know that fighting for money to go to recreational facilities is the right thing to do? Maybe fighting for more funding for schools, or housing for the poor, or for more and better public transportation is a better fight. And what about the unlivable low minimum wage, or the lack of adequate shelters for the homeless, or the increasing number of people who lack basic health coverage, or the inadequate presence of police in dangerous neighborhoods? As the high priests of Caesar’s court, we have to make these tough decisions — and there’s only so much money to go around.

Not only this, but every action creates a reaction, and as Caesar’s wiser and more caring counselors we have to be experts about all of these things. For example, it certainly feels wise and righteous to insist on higher wages for workers. But are we sure this won’t force many small business owners to fire workers, thereby harming the poor more than helping them? And it certainly feels wise and righteous to insist U.S. troops pull out of Iraq right now. But are we sure this won’t result in a greater bloodbath than there already is over there? And it certainly feels wise and righteous to insist on preserving a pool for inner city kids, but what if the money for this has to be taken from classrooms, requiring that some teachers be let go, resulting in a poorer education for these kids? Is a pool more important than education?

It’s all very complex and ambiguous, but once we position ourselves as Caesar’s high priests, we have no choice but to wade through it all. Continue reading ““High Priests of Caesar’s Court””

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter5 Comments
culture, current events, politics, religion

Our Faithless Culture Wars

A while ago, I finally realized that I needed to take Jesus’ teachings much more literally. He said, “don’t judge” and I said, “I’m not judging, but clearly some things are wrong. It’s not judging to say that.” He said, “love, pray for and serve your enemies” and I heard, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” He said, “do not resist the evil man” and I signed petitions against groups and politicians in order to protect Jesus’ values. Jesus said, “so do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?'” and I wonder if we should make plans to attend the financial planning series the church is holding on Thursday nights. Jesus said, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” and I work really hard to be at least in the top quintile in everything I do. See the problem here?

So, haltingly and stumblingly and often failingly, I have tried to unlearn the ways we do things here in the world and adopt the Kingdom way of doing things. What I have learned in the process is that what we see as “standing up for Jesus” or “hate the sin, love the sinner” is really a form of faithlessness. We don’t trust God enough to be able to work things out according to the ways that Jesus told us to do them. We fight and opine and advocate because we are convinced that without our help, God won’t get his way. We think that all that talk about not judging and not resisting and not worrying are good – so far as they go. But there are important issues at play here. If we don’t stand up and fight, we could lose! We could be eating cat food in retirement. “God doesn’t get what it’s like down here” is what I’ve sometimes told myself. Only that’s ridiculous – God made “down here.” He came down here and suffered the worst we could throw at him. And God wins. Always, everywhere. Period. Amen. The reality is that every time I judge or fight or worry or try to keep my position, I’m throwing my lot in with the losing side. Really. Think about that and then think about our culture wars and you can start to see why “the church” has failed so miserably in fighting them. And even more alarmingly, how breathtakingly faithless we are. Continue reading “Our Faithless Culture Wars”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter15 Comments
Bloggy Linky Goodness

Bloggy Linky Goodness – My 500th Post

So, after my less that cheerful and uplifting post last night, tonight I’m all good news. First of all, it’s still Sunday somewhere in the US of A which means that this is the 3rd week in a row that I’ve gotten Bloggy Linky Goodness out on time. Which is like a record for me or something.

Second, this is my 500th blog post. And I want you all to be properly impressed by this feat because it was done with children climbing all over me. I’m not even kidding – last fall, Olivia was channelling the spirit of a cat and kept sitting on my head and neck while I typed. Be impressed, damnit. According a guesstimation based on the usual length of my blog posts, this means I have written approximately as many words here at The Upside Down World as are in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Hobbit. And I’ve only occasionally repeated myself. So, yay me! Too bad I don’t have any rum to have a celebratory drink with. I guess you’ll have to have one for me. But only if you’re old enough and not a recovering alcoholic. In which case, just grab some water and say, “yay Rebecca!” with that instead. B-b-b-b-but, but wait – it gets better! In honor of my 500th blog post, I’m offering 5 days of free-ness on the Kindle version of The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress. From Wednesday through Sunday of this week, you will be able to download my book from Amazon free of charge. I’m giving you a few days advance notice so you have time to inform your family and friends and arrange your downloading parties to take advantage of this amazing offer.

Third – and this is really the best news of all – I think I finally reached spiritual home today. The long journey I’ve been on is complete and I’m ready to start a whole new leg of the adventure. It’s good. I know some of you have been worried (hi, Mom!), but I’m finally OK. I can’t begin to guess when my non-spiritual life will pick up, but that’s just piddly stuff compared to where I’m at now. However, the details are all stuff I’ll have to be getting into over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

Oh – and speaking of my mom, today is my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary! Yep – that’s them on their wedding day up at the top there. They are traveling through the Canadian Rockies where they took their honeymoon right this moment. Only this time, I’m pretty sure they are using hotels and not a tent. So, if you still have that drink handy say, “congratulations, Rebecca Trotter’s mom and dad!” (I’m sure that’s how they want to be addressed these days – as “Rebecca Trotter’s mom and dad”! LOL) If your drink’s already gone, pour yourself another and maybe think about cutting back on the sauce, will ya? Continue reading “Bloggy Linky Goodness – My 500th Post”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
blog stuff

Bloggy Linky Goodness

Ages ago, I briefly tried putting up a weekly list of links to interesting things I was reading. But consistency isn’t really my thing. My week had 8 days in it and all it take for me to forget what I’m doing is walking through a doorway. But, part of the whole blogging/social media experience is building connections with others and promoting eachother’s work. Even for us introverts. So, I’ve decided to go ahead and try the weekly linky thing again. ‘Cuz I always enjoy other people’s linky roundups and I’m always thinking I need to pass on something I’ve read. But I’m going to need your help. If you have a blog post you’d like me to include – your own or someone else’s, please email the link to ratrotter73@yahoo.com or use the form on my contact page to send it to me. Not only will it get your link in front of a couple thousand people, a steady trickle of submissions will help offset my tendency to forget what I’m supposed to be doing.

So without further ado – here’s some awesomeness you should go read: Continue reading “Bloggy Linky Goodness”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter1 Comment