Every once in awhile one stumbles across a video that displays such a lack of critical thinking that it’s hardly worth even bothering to dignify it with a response. However, sometimes it is equally entertaining to engage in what might amount to a rather satisfying fisk of the aforementioned video, if not for the reader than at least for the fisker.

I ran across this video on another blog, and after about 30 seconds was ready to turn it off, but decided to suffer through the entire thing. It’s not that it isn’t well produced or that there aren’t some small kernels of truth buried in there. Rather, this video feeds upon creating absurd polarities that simply do not exist and dogmatically sets them against each other, leaving the viewer with little more than a choice between what amounts to two equally ridiculous and fuzzily sketched caricatures.

Basically, the movement is this: Identify a negative thing that can be linked to religion. Granted, ‘religion’ is never really defined as anything concrete or specific, but is left in some kind of nebulous state that serves as a catch-all for everything that is opposed to Jesus. The upshot, of course, is that anyone who identifies with religion (whatever it is actually supposed to be- an institution? rituals? something other than what the poet is?) is automatically polarized against Jesus. Be watching for this consistent tactic, which unfortunately doesn’t really give this video much meaningful content, as it pits some nebulous entity against Jesus, without really allowing for any robust engagement.

Let the fisking begin!

“What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?”

I seem to remember Jesus saying something about that in the Gospels. He said something like this:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹

The notion that one could be Jewish without being a part of Judaism was inconceivable in Jesus’ day. While there were certainly plenty of Jews who may not have practiced their religion, (to one degree or another, which is part and parcel of any religion) to bifurcate oneself from one’s religion in this way was simply not something that happened. This belies the video creator’s extreme individualism which was a foreign concept in Jesus’ day. But I digress. Continue reading →

The last 4 months have been an absolute blur. Most of the time I have trouble keeping track of where the time went, how fall so quickly turned into winter, how Christmas has come and 2012 is bearing down upon us with breakneck speed.

When life moves that fast, it can bring things into a strange sort of focus and change the way you perceive life. When every day brings a new clinic visit, going to the hospital, having some kind of procedure, etc., it sort of feels like every movement forward is a victory, every setback a defeat, but still every moment and every day is so crucial, so important. In such a context, there is both excitement and anxiety, hope and trepidation.

Not quite a month ago I was on my back in the hospital, barely wanting to move and feeling at the lowest point of my life. Now, I am back at home, feeling better and actually having some form of a normal life. To have such a dramatic change in such a short period of time, to be on an upward swing was an amazing experience, both going through it and in retrospect.

Eventually the dramatic changes stop, especially with stem cell transplants. After about 45 days post-transplant I have entered a period of relative stability where counts ebb and flow very gradually as I am slowly incorporating my brother’s stem cells, my immune system is rebuilding itself and steroids are both suppressing that immune system and preventing rejection. It has become (and will remain) a very slow, drawn out ordeal in which progress is agonizingly slow.

And that’s when it hits you. What I like to call The Grind. Continue reading →