I'm angry. Very, very angry. I swim in a world of divorce. There is no part of Christianity where divorce and marriages-on-the-rocks is not rampant. No where. It's in every church, among America's pastors, youth directors, Christian colleges, seminaries, the mission field, the para-church world. Actually, when I don't here guys ever talk about how hard marriage is openly I assume their situation is VERY bad. Silence is the red flag. It sickening.

A friend of mine started divorce proceedings just after two years of marriage. He's vowed to never get married again and he never wants kids. His wife left, with the dogs, about 6 months ago. The dude's lost, it's tough to watch.

The way we seem to deal with marriage problems it is by sweeping them under the rug in churches until it explodes. Honesty about marriages in trouble doesn't come until one spouse leaves or threatens to leave. Pathetically, people can't be open about their jacked-up marriage BEFORE (folks), BEFORE it's too late.

Fellas, if your marriage sucks get some help. Don't just passively let it decline. Many of you are stuck with controlling, oppressive wives. A lot of you are even scared of her. That's not going to work.

Here's some silly, empty rhetoric: "we just need to preach the gospel more." Ahh, yeah, right, sure thing. We'll keep doing that and I"ll keep having to hang out with kids of divorce in "gospel preaching churches." There must not be a church in America then that preaches the gospel.

True story: Last week I'm hanging out with a kid whose Dad just left his Mom and the fam for "the other woman." A "Christian family," sitting across the table eating pancakes from this kind of pain was at times unbearable that day.

THEN, the booth across from us walks in a mom and her two sons. She looked like she had been in a bar fight and lost bad. It was about 1:00 pm. She was on the phone talking about the "custody" battle to a friend (actually it sounded like her attorney).

The boys looked dead, like they had no blood sugar at all. They just sat there, faces buried in their plates. And then the Mom got off the phone and worst thing happened:

Time Magazine ran another story attempting to address the claim, contrary to LOTS and LOTS of researchers from several sectors, that American boys are in crisis. The author notes that after 10 years of panic about boys that boys are doing better. I totally disagree. Some boys are doing better but the youth ministries and activities I continue to be involved around the country paint a dire portrait: feminized, emasculated and they don't even know it. Sad.

"The culture" has been talking about boy crisis for a decade. John Eldredge talked about the effects of father wounds but many conservative nut-jobs rejected him because doesn't use the phrases they love to hear. So churches haven't listened still.

The Reformed world continues to be asleep at the switch while the divorce rates get worse and worse (daaaahh, people there's a connection here!!) and men are more and more impotent for anything kingdom-oriented and missional. Useless, passive men. Other conservative Christians don't think there's a problem or, oddly, think that masculine training is getting guys better at doing church stuff and evangelism, and liberal Christians are too busy swimming in androgyny to notice.

And then you get this empty rhetoric, "we just need to preach the gospel more." Ahhh, what makes people think that preaching "ALONE" makes everything else just fall nicely into place? Where did that come from? I've only done youth ministry in "gospel preaching churches" and they are full of emasculated, passive, men and really, really jacked-up kids.

There must not be a church in America then that preaches the gospel if that's "the" problem.

I think we may have made preaching an idol and/or made an idol out of "getting the gospel right."

Here's the Time Magazine story The Myth About Boys.

From Time:

(OCEAN CITY, Md.) — The remains of four pre-term infants found in and around a modest home in this resort town were being examined to see whether the woman charged with murdering one of the babies is the mother of all four.

The grisly discoveries came to light after Christy Freeman was admitted to a hospital with bleeding last week. Doctors found that she'd recently given birth, but had no baby. An investigation has uncovered four tiny sets of remains.

Bulldozers on Tuesday were to resume digging in a vacant lot next to Freeman's apartment. Ocean City Police Spokesman Barry Neeb said cadaver dogs led police to believe there may be more remains in the yard, but none had been found.

Freeman, the mother of four living children, was charged with murder and manslaughter and denied bond Monday. She was being held in the Worcester County jail awaiting an Aug. 27 preliminary hearing.

I don't even know what to say.

(NEW ORLEANS - 15 Jul 2006--
Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards, Tynya HarrisPhoto by Sean Gardner/Getty Images). Wow, whatever would disadvantaged blacks ever do if middle-class white people didn't try to save them?

I wrote a few comments explaining why John Edwards' recent poverty tour may serve as good rhetoric but, in the end, demonstrates very poor economic thinking. His ideas essentially represent the failed "war on poverty" initiatives that came out of LBJ's "Great Society" foolishness. It's a 2007 remix of a few old, tired, played out ideologies. The programs didn't work in the 70s and 80s and they won't work if Edwards becomes president. Edwards wants to raise the minimum wage to nearly $9.50/hour. Where does Edwards expect that money to come from? In the long run, these ideas eventually hurt the poor as we witnessed before Congress overhauled welfare in 1996.

You can read my comments at the Detroit News as well an extended version of the same editorial at the Acton Institute.

The minimum wage DOES NOT help poor people!! It CANNOT reduce poverty. Why don't people see this?

August 3rd is the opening of El Cantante: a movie about the life of Hector Lavoe (La ley de salsa--haha!) starring Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez

The website for the movie is here.

Amigos, una pelicula sobre la vida de Hector Lavoe!! Vayaaaaa!

Responden (debajo) solo es espanol, gracias:

The answer: yes.

Two reasons: (1) a federal indictment, if convicted, would violate portions of his contract I'm sure. Most of us would probably loose our jobs if we were indicted for federal charges related to dog fighting. Dog fighting, folks. You're making millions of dollars, representing a team and a league, and you're dog fighting? Seriously? Let Vick go.

(2) He's actually not that good of an NFL quarterback. He's an amazing athlete and should probably be a receiver. He may be one of the most athletic guys in the game today. But this would be a perfect time for Atlanta to get a QB who can hang in the pocket and run an NFL offense.

From ABC News:

Vick is accused with three others of conspiracy involving competitive dogfighting, procuring and training pit bulls for fighting, and conducting the enterprise across state lines. Federal prosecutors allege the operation known as Bad Newz Kennels operated on Vick's property in rural Surry County.

Fellas, what should happen to Vick? Sound off below.

I just posted something on Acton's blog about a new show called "Hot Ghetto Mess."

The Washington Post just ran a story on it:

Since 2004, [Jam Donaldson’s] Web site, http://Hotghettomess.com, has featured a motley assortment of gangbangers, hip-hop poseurs and strutting hoochie mamas, set off by quotes and comments that suggest Donaldson’s disapproval. The featured “Mess of the Month” for June is an unnamed plus-size woman wearing a halter top split almost to her navel. Her accessories are arm and chest tattoos and an oversize necklace with a cross. The caption beneath her photo is a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “Nothing in [all] the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

[The show] features video clips of young African Americans (as well as folks of the Caucasianpersuasion) engaged in various acts of idiocy (random street brawls, gratuitous booty-shaking, etc.). It also puts cultural ignorance on display (people are asked in man-on-the-street interviews whether they know what “NAACP” stands for; they don’t). The tone, Donaldson says, is more or less in keeping with the same finger-wagging critique embedded in the Web site’s slogan: “We Got to Do Better.”

www.hotghettomess.com

Fellas, I don't even know what to say anymore.

Fellas, Little Miss Sunshine is amazing. It's so real at times it's scary. I totally balled watching the scene above (if you've seen the movie please don't give it away in the comments section below).

The sound track is amazing as well. I don't know what else to say. It was that good. You gotta see this.

Reviews welcome below:

From CNN:

Army Spc. Christopher D. Kube was memorialized Thursday in a packed theater at this outpost in east Baghdad. Another fallen soldier. . .

Army Spc. Christopher Kube needed his parents' permission when he enlisted at age 17.He was 18. He was a newlywed.

He was killed on July 14, eight months after he arrived in Iraq on a deployment that made him nervous from the start, as one fellow soldier remembered. Back at his home station, Fort Carson, Colorado, he drew attention for being so young, so short, so slight and so cheerful.

"When I saw him I asked, `How old are you, 10?"' recalled his platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Eugenie Byron-Griffin. "`What are you doing here? You're a baby.' He looked me straight in my eye, with his chest poked out like he does, and he said, `I'm 17, and I ain't no baby. I'm a man."'

Tears flowing, she added: "Everyone in the unit used to mess with him because he was so small. And almost always he would fight hard to prove his manhood. Like when he purchased his first vehicle and bragged about how little he paid for it."

Fellas, this story was tough to read. Very tough.

If you don't live near racial minorities you have another unarticulated reason to be glad: your environment's probably cleaner.

From CNN:

As he surveys the nation's landfills, chemical plants, waste facilities, and smelters, Robert Bullard sees an insidious form of institutional racism.

Robert Bullard is the director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

"When you look at the neighborhoods that are where you have a lot of different waste facilities... the people who live closest are oftentimes the most vulnerable people who have the fewest resources to escape neighborhoods because of residential segregation, housing discrimination, and limited incomes," said Bullard, a professor at Georgia's Clark Atlanta University and the director of that university's Environmental Justice Resource Center.

"Just because you're poor, just because you live physically on the wrong 'side of the track' doesn't mean that you should be dumped on."

Those people are predominantly minorities, Bullard said. In fact, more than half of the 9 million people living within two miles of the nation's hazardous waste facilities are minorities, according to "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987-2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism," a recent report that Bullard co-wrote.

Wow.

Recently, I was talking to one of the kids at church who's Dad left the family for another woman. This kid said that he wanted to have a relationship with his dad but it was hard and awkward because of what the man did to their family. This high school student was deciding if he should have a relationship with his dad at all. Whew, tough. I had no profound words for him. I've had this conversation in nearly every church I've ever done youth work for (except for one very large black baptist church that seemed to have an extremely low divorce rate).

Living in a bad marriage or being a child-victim of divorce must be one of the most brutally painful things a person can live through. I long for the day when I can point my unbelieving friends to marriages at church as a possible model. There seems to be a few extremes: the puritan/Amish type family, the cultural Christian family, the luke-warm/laissez fair family, and "the Mom who's really the father" family--all can produce really jacked-up kids. I have seen a few families functioning well, not perfectly, with kids that love Jesus (and love the neighbors, including unbelievers of multiple races and economic classes as equals) but it wasn't Puritanical at all. They never did family devotions and stuff like that or sent their kids to Christian school.

I recently saw one of the myspace pages for a girl (now in her 20s) that I taught at a Calvinistic Christian school many years ago. I almost cried. She could easily be friends with Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears in every sense of the word. Her dad's ordained.

Years ago, I was told that the only good model for family was the Puritanical one. Is that right? What about the ancient Jewish one, Greek, Italian, Spanish, African, Asian, etc? I dunno. . .

Hey, I saw this list in stop-divorce-now.com advertised on CNN's website. This list seems odd but it's suppose to keep your spouse from walking out. The site offers the magic book that gives the following wisdom:

(1) What to say to your lover if you think they have been unfaithful.

(2) The exact 17 words to say if you discover your mate is going to move out.

(3) What to buy at a drug store in the "baby" section that will totally win your mate back. It's a device so powerful you'll keep it around the house all the time.

(4) How to use your radio to make a "cheating" spouse forsake the affair and be devoted to you.

(5) The "grocery list" you should make to get your mate "addicted" to you.

(6) The "Two Month Trick" one woman used to fall head-over-heels in love with her husband whom she previously hated.

(7) Why you should not listen to most so-called marriage therapists.

(8) How to use the 80/20 rule to make your lover feel totally bonded to you.

(9) The 3 movies you should watch that will reveal the most powerful love secrets ever discovered. (Hint: It's not what you think.)

(10) How to recognize your lover's hidden desires and longings that will make it so that they never leave you.

(11) Don't write a love letter. Don't buy them another gift. Don't fix their car. Don't fix them breakfast... UNTIL you know the addictive power of getting them hooked on THIS.

There's more:

Even though you can't live in one of the coolest cities in America (Miami) with a huge population of Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans, you can listen to salsa, merengue, bachata, and cha-cha atLa Kalle 98.3 FM. That station has a live stream. It's mostly salsa and amazing stuff.

I've got to find the Puerto Ricans in my town or I'm gonna loose it. I'm seriously thinking about contacting the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce to try to create a special program to attract Puerto Ricans to St. Louis. A city without a large population of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans is one word: aburrido!

Miami's amazing!!

Cuidate!

The New York Times today ran an Associated Press story reporting that teenage sex rates have hit a new low. This is good news. The teenage birth-rate has hit a record low as well.

In 2005, 47 percent of high school students — 6.7 million — reported having had sexual intercourse, down from 54 percent in 1991. The rate of those who reported having had sex had remained the same since 2003.

Of those who reported having had sex during a three-month period in 2005, 63 percent — about 9 million — said they used condoms. That is an increase from the 46 percent reported in 1991.

The teenage birth rate in 2005, the report said, was 21 per 1,000 young women ages 15 to 17 — an all-time low. The rate in 1991 was 39 births per 1,000 teenagers.

However, there may be other factors that mask the fact that teenage sexual activity hasn't really changed at all.

(1) Teenage birth rates are lower because more and more teens have easy access to abortion and birth-control. There is no social stigma assigned to being a sexually active or pregnant teenager and baby-boomer parents have no scruples about encouraging abortion and birth-control for kids, unlike any other generation of parents in American history. This is a moral problem.

(2) Teens have redefined what constitutes as sex. While the rates of intercourse may have declined the study leaves unanswered questions about the rates of other forms of sexual activity including oral sex, pornography, etc. "Hooking up" can include all sorts of sexual activity that is not specifically intercourse. The myth, of course, is that only intercourse negatively affects teenagers psychological, emotionally, and spiritually.

The Washington Post reports that nearly half of all teens engage in oral sex.

I discuss it here more at Acton.

More thoughts?

At Acton I posted a response to Jonathan Kozol's column in the New York Times regarding the Supreme Court's brilliant decision to end desegregation programs.

For some reason the elites think that schools made up of blacks and Latinos, predominantly, is a problem. It's not. Blacks and Latinos don't need to be around white people in order to get a great education.

I argued this five years ago and yesterday (again).

Photo courtesy of our friends at Spirit, Water, Blood.

I keep trying to find the guys who are trying to route this juxtaposition out of American reformed circles for good--beyond the occasional document, comment, or lip service but the "grassroots" guys actually doing things on the "streets" in the South (or maybe on the golf courses). When I search I only seem to come across PC-USA stuff. Am I looking in the wrong places? Any ideas on where I can find the websites, sermons, or articles of the southern guys who are risking their own reputations and church political(power) ambitions on this issue? More PC-USA stuff here at the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns (ACREC). Any ideas?

Remember Dabney's A Defense of Virginia and The South

Sports Illustrated reports on the game:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- On a night of tricky hops, Ichiro Suzuki and the American League also bounced back to win.

Instead of a Barry Bonds splash shot, the defining hit at Tuesday's All-Star game was Suzuki's inside-the-park home run, the first in the game's history.

Suzuki lined a go-ahead, two-run drive off the right-field wall in the fifth inning, Carl Crawford and Victor Martinez later hit conventional shots and the Americans made it 10 straight over the Nationals, holding on for a 5-4 victory.

BTW, what do you guys think about the "home-field advantage" for the World Series being based on the outcome of this game? Personally, I think it's stupid.

Thoughts?

A Pentecostal dude and his wife questioned whether or not I was a Christian at a wedding I recently attended in Philadelphia.

After telling him that I was the groom's 9th-grade Bible teacher at a (Reformed Presbyterian) Christian school (that his friend actually attended) and after telling him that I've done some teaching at the seminary level, he looked at me dead in the eye and asked, "so are you a Christian?"

Then his wife chimed in to tell a story of a men they've known who knew the Bible in-and-out but weren't Christians. This guy said that some people just studied the Bible for "religious purposes" and didn't actually believe it. While this is true given the fact that this wedding was held at an old-school, dispensational, arminian church (see I'm ecumenical), I was taken back a little.

Am I a Christian? Am I a what? I wish I could tell you that he was joking. I'm not sure I convinced him. This would be like asking me if I liked teaching, or breathing, or french fries, or something like that.

There are so many mean things I thought about saying to him later because of his church background (which he made a point to tell me) but my only response was, "yes."

I blogged about it on Acton's site, suggesting they should bury more words and phrases like, "it's because of racism."

Check it out here.

Friends, I'm totally swamped right now. I just moved into a one of those house things (like the one pictured above) and I'm totally climbing out of boxes and trying to figure out where to put stuff. I've got 100 million little decisions to make. It's about to drive me batty. UUUgghhhh!

I don't have the internet at home yet so I haven't been blogging but hopefully I'll be up and running soon after my trip to Philly July 5-9.

Peace and Soul!