It's Official!

my blog is now simply global51.com

yay!

more to come very soon

Mark Driscoll on Worship

"I’ll be happy when we have more than just prom songs to Jesus sung by some effeminate guy on an acoustic guitar offered as mainstream worship music. Right now most worship music is still coming from the top down through such things as Christian radio and record labels. But the trend today in a lot of churches is writing your own music to reflect your culture and community, and I pray this trend of music from the bottom up continues.”

Why Gal5:1??

Christ died to set us free from sin and from a long list of laws and regulations. Christ gave his life to set us free-not free to do whatever we want because that would lead us back into slavery to our selfish desires. Rather, thanks to Jesus, we are now free and able to do what was impossible before- to live unselfishly. Those who appeal to their freedom so that they can have their own way to indulge their own desires are falling back into sin. But it is also wrong to put a burden of law-keeping on Christians. We must stand against those who would enslave us with rules, methods, or special conditions for being saved or growing in Christ.

We are free!

Eminent Domian

i'm thinking about registering a domian name but how does all that work??

Tom "Christ"

Tom Cruise is not just one of Hollywood's leading actors, he is also the new 'Christ' of Scientology, leaders of the religion apparently believe. Reports in the Sun newspaper claim that he has been told he is the "chosen one" to spread news about the faith. Leader David Miscavige also believes that in years to come the Mission: Impossible actor will be worshipped like Jesus for his efforts to raise the profile of the religion, according to the British tabloid.

A source said to be close to Cruise told the paper: “Tom has been told he is Scientology’s Christ-like figure.

“Like Christ, he’s been criticised for his views. But future generations will realise he was right.”

---

Weird...

.Laugh.

Wii Party #2

this is a request to become apart of the Mii family:

Lance Crawford (very happy!)


love ya bro

The Walk Around + review

After seeing the movie Pan's Labyrinth (incredible movie, see it), I started looking into what labyrinths actually were. Labyrinths are pretty interesting structures that had significant meaning to those who walked them. A labyrinth is basically a path that circles around itself in an unambiguous route until it leads to its own center. The journey of the labyrinth is divided into four movement:

1)On the threshold
2)Journeying in
3)The resting place
4)Journeying out

The labyrinth's gift is simplicity, it strips away the do's and don'ts to focus on God. No degrees are necessary to master the labyrinth, no long training session, no technical manuals, just the need for more. This journey was very important to those in medieval times. During Medieval times, the labyrinth symbolized a hard path to the God with a clearly defined center (God) and one entrance (birth). Labyrinths can be thought of as symbolic forms of pilgrimage; people can walk the path, journeying towards God. Labyrinths are used modernly by many to help the user achieve a contemplative state. By walking amongst the turnings, the user loses track of direction and of the outside world, and thus quiets the mind. The result is a relaxed mental attitude free of the distractions from God. Once in the center, the walker could use the space as a resting place, a time for reflection, or worship. The Journey out would be to take the new found reverence, peace and worship out into the life of the walker.

If anyone is interested in finding a labyrinth in Tallahassee there is one located at Holy Comforter Episcopal School.



Pan's Labyrinth did just that...it was a winding journey between reality and fantasy. The further into the movie the more you were unsure if the fantasy was reality. With one central path and a serene ending, this movie does everything amazingly. Though there were a few moans and groans at the beginning because it IS sub-titled, i couldn't see it having the same impact if it was redone in english. This is a masterpiece of a movie that everyone needs to see.

Wii Party

I was pretty bored today so I thought I would make two of my favorite people on my Nintendo Wii...Behold:

Pastor Brian


Me (The Creator)


Pastor Jerad

Brainwashed @ Camp

So, at 7.30 this evening in the packed out cinema at FSU, I waited eagerly to see the Oscar nominated documentary Jesus Camp. The documentary by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady follows a group of kids while they attend a camp called "Kids on Fire." Basically, follow three pre-teens from Missouri heading to a summer camp in Devils Lake, North Dakota. Document their experiences there, and follow up on the aftermath. This was a really sobering look into a small group of radical Christians...I really enjoyed it but I also hated it. The documentary tried to label every evangelical Christian into this group showing the audience that there are many in this country that are training youth to become militant Christians wanting to control the government and the American way of life.

My first complaint about the movie is that the camps leader, Becky Fischer, associates with the Word of Faith movement (a subset of the Pentecostal movement). The fact that there is no explanation in the differences will make the uneducated and uninformed assume that all Pentecostals act and behave the way Becky Fischer and her kids act. And for attending a Pentecostal church for almost a year and a half I was very disappointed that those that see this movie will assume that.

Early in the film we are introduced to our angry guide for this tour of the evangelical underworld: Mike Papantonio, liberal Methodist, top-flight lawyer, host of Air America's Ring of Fire talk show, and one of Air America's board members. He informed a caller to his program—and us by the way—about "some new brand of religion out there. … And right now everything they do they say they do in the name of God: that we need to go to war in the name of God; we're being told that George Bush, of all people, is a holy man who's been anointed with the job of creating a Christian society—not just in America but all over the world. There's this entanglement of politics with religion. What kind of lesson is that for our children?"

Does it matter that evangelicalism or Pentecostalism is not new? Does it matter that no evangelical preacher I've heard of denies the relevance of the Sermon on the Mount? Does it matter that "peace-making" is not incompatible with defending the weak and oppressed? Does it matter that I've never once heard of George Bush being referred to as a "holy man" either in church, in private conversation, or in all the pages of Christian Magazines? No, no, no, and no. Yet, Papantonio says it, it must be true, he begins and ever remains unchallenged in the context of this film.

Though this interjection by Papantonio seems to be more of dramatics than having anything to do with the kids in the movie was sit through waiting to see the actual camp.

We then meet Levi, a 12 year old that plans on attending the camp. Here is the first conversation between Levi and Becky Fischer:

Levi: At five I got saved...
Becky Fischer: Yeah?
Levi: ...because I just wanted more of life.

COME ON, now I’m not saying that it isn't possible for a child to be saved (accepting and proclaiming that Jesus is Savior and God thus receiving the gift of salvation) but for a 5 year old to think "life on the playground just doesn't have what I need...transformers and pokemon just don't do it for me anymore" you have to be kidding. This is either the learned language of disillusioned, middle-aged, grown-ups, or it's a reflection of adolescent clinical depression. I'll guess the former.

From his preschool disenchantment, to his preaching to the collected youth at camp, to his bold self-introduction to Ted Haggard as a fellow preacher (his favorite sermon topic is faith), there is no way the words "typical," "representative," or "average" can be applied to Levi.

Soon after his introduction we are taken to his family life where he is home schooled. Jesus Camp notes "75% of the home schooled kids in the United States are evangelical Christians." What the film doesn't note, however, is that this small number of kids out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. Without explanation of a lack of proper education in the schools we are taken to a family with an agenda.

Levi's Mom: Did you get to the part yet where they say that science hasn't proven anything?

This utter lack of rational thought propels the idea of the Christian agenda to take over America. It continues at the dinner table:

Campers: I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag...

The Parents have re-written the pledge of allegiance, which their kids recite before every meal.

It gets ever so stranger from there. From commands from Becky Fischer to have the kids speak in tongues (with no sign of interpretation) to the culmination of the camp is Levi preaching and then a call for the kids to rise up and over throw abortion...there is just an eerie feeling about the whole camp.

Children are very impressionable and they are a product of their environment. This film, its point of view, and what it sometimes depicts angers me. But I'll get over it. I just hope, in the end, that Levi and the other two children who are spotlighted—Victoria and Rachael, both 9—move past it, because the effects of this film will still be real for them long after the rest of us have forgotten all about it.

And if you have read to the all the way to the end of this blog...hear this...you need to see this whether Christian or non-Christian. It is a very eye opening experience of how misconception of the bible and Christianity have turned people into the antithesis have what Christianity is about and what Jesus wanted for his followers.

I'll leave you with this tidbit from Fischer:

Becky Fischer: It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!