If you're gonna wear the uniform, you have to do the job...

During sophomore year of college, I spent pretty much the whole year wearing a Santa hat everywhere. It was my own way of trying to be a quirky, unique individual at an age when that was important. One evening, I was walking down a city street with a group of friends, and a homeless person approached us to ask for money. We walked past without acknowledging him, and he called to my retreating back “Aw, come on, Santa!”

I did an about-face, abashed, and went back to him and gave him some money.

Because if you’re wearing the uniform, you have to do the job.

 I couldn’t wear the symbol of generosity, of a saint renowned for taking risks to give, and giving anonymously with no expectation of receiving anything in return, and then refuse to behave like Saint Nicholas when called upon. I had to either behave like Santa, or take off the hat.

 

I’ll come back to that thought in a while.

 

Recently, I’m seeing Evangelicals post online that they’re tired of being attacked by our culture generally, and liberals in particular, for being Christian.

I assure you, Evangelicals, you are not.

You have never in your life been criticized for loving your neighbor as yourself.

You have never in your life been shamed for feeding the hungry.

You have never in your life been hated for taking care of the sick, the elderly, the orphan, people with disabilities.

I promise you, no one has ever seen you engage in self-sacrificial generosity, pointed to that behavior, and shouted “See! I told you, religion does more harm than good!”

I guarantee, no one has ever seen you show mercy or compassion to those who need it and said “What’s wrong with Christians?”

To the extent that the behavior of Christians has been Christ-like, it has always been applauded.

On the occasions that people see Christ-like behavior from Christians, they say “Wow. If I could find a church full of people like that, I would go.”

Christianity isn’t under attack, at least not in this country. The cross is not under attack, any more than Santa Claus was under attack that evening when I was asked for money. What’s under attack is something that all too often wears the uniform, but doesn’t do the job.

Evangelical Christians in this country are known right now for their thoughts and prayers, and their political activism, and their ichthus bumper stickers, and their not-very-good music, and their rich megachurch pastors, and their feelings about LGBTQ people and abortion and liberals. Those things have been very visible.

What they are NOT known for right now is their love. That has been largely invisible to society at large.

In this country, churches take in HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars annually. Tax-free. With that kind of money, a group of people whose Golden Rule is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” should be able to do all kinds of good in the world. There should be no one hungry, no one homeless, no one sick and lacking treatment, no one lacking for help with addiction, or vocational training, or child care.

And yet, the hungry are still without food. The sick are still without treatment. The outcast are still without community. People always hear “I’ll pray for you” from Christians when something horrible happens to them. They seldom hear “Here is some money to help with the medical bills. Let me take the kids out for the afternoon so they get to have some fun and you get to have a break. I’ll make dinner when we get back.”

Collectively, the church wears the uniform, but doesn’t do the job.

And so, if you as an individual Christian personally ARE doing the job… if you are sincere in your belief, are doing everything you can to be Christ’s incarnate love in the world, are giving self-sacrificially… remember that people won’t always know that when you tell them you’re a Christian. They see creatures like Joel Osteen and Roy Moore calling themselves Christians, and think “You’re one of THEM.” They’ve seen too damn many people wearing a cross walk right past the person in need. If someone assumes that when you say “I’ll pray for you”, that means “I can’t be bothered to DO anything for you”, you can be upset about that. But you can’t blame the person who’s lashing out at the uniform. Be upset that the uniform has been tarnished by the church failing utterly to live worthily of it. And hold yourself and your brethren accountable to do better and be better.

Because even non-Christians know what Christianity SHOULD look like. They see that it DOESN’T look like that. That’s often WHY they’re not Christians.

You won’t change their minds by being defensive when they’re angry at you for what Christianity has come to represent to them. You certainly won’t change their minds by abandoning the principles you preach in order to gain political power over them.

But you might change their minds by showing them what Christian love looks like in practice.

If Christianity can’t do that, then it is dead. And the thing that has replaced it, deserves to die.

Either do the job, church, or take off the uniform. Stop wearing the cross, take the bumper stickers off your car, stop having revivals where everyone comes to the altar just as they are and leaves just as they were. Stop telling people how important your values are, unless you’re prepared to live them even when it hurts.

Because if you’re wearing the uniform, you have to do the job.

 

All cuisine is fusion cuisine (if you look back far enough)

 

Preface: I am not even remotely an expert on this subject, and am happy to be corrected or given more information on any point where what I wrote is inaccurate or incomplete. I just love eating, love trying new flavors, and am writing a thing related to that, based on the limited knowledge and experience I have plus a few brief Google searches.

Today I got involved in a discussion about how American Mexican food isn’t real Mexican food, and what a travesty it is to put cheddar and sour cream on tacos.

And, I mean, they’re not wrong about Tex-Mex being very different than authentic Mexican food. Where they’re wrong is in saying that the fact that it’s not authentically Mexican means that it’s bad.

Just because an Americanized dish would be unrecognizable in the old country doesn't mean it's bad.

Entire books have been written about how Chinese American food is vastly different from authentic Chinese food. Crab Rangoon, chow mein, beef and broccoli, most of the dishes that we would order at an American Chinese restaurant... were invented by Chinese-American cooks using the ingredients that were readily available in America. But both cuisines are delicious.

I grew up with Italian New Yorkers. I learned how to make spaghetti and meatballs from my mom, who learned it from her dad... but he didn't learn it from his parents, because they came from Italy and the recipe didn't. It was invented here.

Furthermore, the authentic dishes of Italy today are radically different from the dishes that would have existed just a few centuries ago, before the tomato was introduced to Europe from the Americas. Or a couple centuries before that, when Marco Polo came back from China and said "Hey guys, guess what you can do with grains? You can grind them into flour, sure, but then you can make the flour INTO EDIBLE SHAPES."

And millennia before that, the stuff that the ancient Romans cooked was its own unique cuisine that was NOTHING like modern Italian food - whether your experience makes you think of "Italian food" as the kind you can get in a Tuscan ristorante or the kind you can get in a New Jersey diner.

And the Polish food that everyone, including native Poles, would consider most archetypal - pierogis - also didn't (and couldn't) exist a few centuries ago because the potato was busy being part of South American cuisine.

But you know what WASN'T part of South American cuisine at that time? Carne asada, pollo con mole, carnitas, or any other dish that involved chicken, beef, or pork. Those animals were introduced to the Americas by the colonizers. Same with pretty much any crop that relies on bees for pollination - no bees till the Europeans brought them. (They also brought rats and smallpox of course, along with guns and inventive new ways of being evil oppressors, but that's another blog for another, more knowledgable, person to write).

As for curry: It's such a mishmash of influences from British, Indian, and Portuguese cooks and ingredients that no one can really say what an "authentic" curry is.

Thai food - the current version owes its existence to chile peppers that were never native to Thailand.

Ethiopian food *cue heavenly choir descending to sing of its glory* - I think it quite possibly uses every spice that has ever existed anywhere, and that wasn't possible until people from everywhere started bringing spices to Ethiopia. Though injera is 100% Ethiopian - it's where teff originated, and where the technique was perfected thousands of years ago - a lot of the ingredients in the foods served over injera originated elsewhere.

Every cuisine developed, and evolved, and continues to evolve, based on one thing: What ingredients, fuels, and cooking methods are cheap and abundant and easily available to the cook?

Rice grows well in Eastern Asia. Wheat grows well in Western Europe. Tomatoes grow well in warm places. Potatoes grow well in cool places. Spicy food generally comes from countries where those spices grow well. Wine tends to show up where grapes grow, beer where wheat and barley and hops grow, sake where rice grows. Where you get chickpeas you get hummus. Where you get soybeans you get soy sauce. So of course you found rice noodles in China, baguettes in France, and so forth.

But when people move around, and bring their foods with them, you get new combinations. Where you got Italian chefs who suddenly lived in a place where there was cheap beef, you got spaghetti and meatballs. Where you got Chinese chefs who couldn't find any gai lan but had discovered broccoli from their Italian neighbors, you got beef and broccoli. Where you got Indian chefs using Portuguese ingredients and techniques along with their own, you got vindaloo. Where you got indigenous chefs who already had chocolate and chiles being introduced to chicken, you got pollo con mole.

No cuisine is "authentic" anymore, and hasn't been since the technology for world-wide trade and conquest began to exist. Go back far enough in time, and the only truly "authentic" food idea any culture came up with on its own was "Hey, maybe instead of eating it as soon as it stops wriggling we could hold it over the fire first - but not long enough to burn it." Anything more complicated than that required someone saying, at a minimum, "Hey, that plant that grows in the next valley would taste good with this, and maybe the people there would trade some for this plant that grows here". And all kinds of awesome foods have arisen from that blending of ideas and ingredients from all over the world. There's all kinds of horrible reasons those cultures got blended, of course - colonialism, slavery, wars, exploitation of immigrant labor, etc. And nothing can make those things not have been horrible. But that's all the more reason to celebrate the good things that ordinary people salvaged from those horrors, as ordinary people used what was available (usually under brutalizing circumstances) to do the most basic human thing possible: make something nice for their families to eat.

So by all means use cotija and crema if you can get them, rather than cheddar and sour cream. The more authentic ingredients are delicious, and if you're lucky enough to live in a city where lots of Latinos live and therefore the ingredients are available at the local stores, you should take the opportunity to try those ingredients. Get real Italian olive oil if you can afford it, and for God's sake don't waste it by cooking with it - dip your bread in it instead. If you can get bok choy instead of cabbage to go into your stir-fry, you will not regret doing so. Go find the one place in town that sells Ćwikła to have with your pierogies and kielbasa, if your town has a place that sells it.

But there's no need to be mad at other people for using what's easily and cheaply available to them instead of the original ingredients. That’s how people do food, and always have done food. And that’s where the exciting new ideas happen.

 

Listening to experts

 

I don’t know anything about cars or how they work. I am aware that there is a thing called an internal combustion engine, and I have the general impression that the process involves very tiny and carefully controlled explosions, and something called pistons that go up and down with the tiny explosions, and gears connecting to other gears,  and that somehow all of that equipment converts fuel into energy into motion. But I have no real clue how any of it works.

 

Let’s imagine that I begin to have trouble with stopping the car, and when I go to the mechanic they tell me that the brake line has a leak and the brake pads and drums need replacement.

 

Now: Imagine that I didn’t trust that assessment for some reason. So I take it to another mechanic, and another, and another, and all of them tell me the same thing: Fix the brake line, pads and drums need replacement.

Let’s further imagine that, upon hearing that money is tight, the mechanics even offer to do the repairs for free, because they’re concerned that I will be a danger to myself and other drivers if I try to keep driving the car in this state. It’s ultimately self-interest that motivates them, because they don’t want to drive on a road with someone whose brakes don’t work, in case I end up harming them or someone they care about. The fact that they have good brakes, after all, is not going to fully protect them and their loved ones from me and my bad brakes. So it’s not pure altruism that drives them to offer the solution for free… but still, it means my problem can be addressed and it won’t cost me anything.

 

But I still don’t like the answer, so I go on Facebook and ask my friends and family what to do about my car. One of my friends tells me “Brake drums are a hoax by Big Auto to make money. Your real problem is that you didn’t feed the magic elves. Put some sugar in the gas tank, that’ll fix it”. And a bunch of my other friends tell me the same thing. One of them posts a link to someone who says he’s a mechanic and is wearing greasy overalls, who swears by the “elven gas tank sugar” solution.

 

However, none of these friends are mechanics. None of them know any more about how cars work than I do – possibly even LESS than I do. I don’t really understand what a brake drum is, but I DO know the elf solution is unlikely to be correct, and I DO know that sugar in the gas tank is not a good idea. And it seems unlikely that this one dude who says he’s a mechanic is right, when all the other mechanics say it’s the brake line, pads, and drums.

So:

Should I take the advice of people known to be experts? Or should I take the advice of people who don’t know anything, who are getting their advice from people who likewise don’t know anything?

 

It’s obvious how ridiculous it would be, in this scenario, to believe people who don’t know what they’re talking about, and ignore people who do. Anyone with any sense at all, whether they know about the subject or not, would tell me to listen to the experts rather than to the people contradicting experts. Even if the people spreading misinformation are ALSO claiming to be experts.

 

And yet, 1/3 of the country thinks they know better than doctors and scientists when it comes to vaccines…

Evangelicals, abuse, and how the former can work to stop the latter

 

I saw an article posted on an Evangelical friend’s page today. And I cannot BELIEVE that I’m about to post a link to something from Focus on the Family, still less that I’m posting it because they are 100% RIGHT in what they said. But here we are:

 

https://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/how-to-know-if-youre-in-an-emotionally-abusive-relationship/?refcd=1085104&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=schmit_2021&A15utm_content=article&fbclid=IwAR19NdGOifVi3ULVJ19PEEcw3pPQ6bOO0GdvlySR23I_kGWnnNGrc8qoe0I

 

Let’s begin by saying: This article is a BIG step in the right direction for Evangelicals, and I want to give credit where it’s due. This article is a GOOD thing. Teaching women to recognize abuse, and that it’s okay to get out of an abusive relationship, is a GOOD thing. Teaching Evangelical women that domestic abuse violates the core principles of Christian Scripture, that abuse is a blasphemy against a God who is love – that’s a GOOD thing. The fact that it’s coming from such a conservative source as Focus on the Family indicates that even the people most reluctant to change their thinking are starting to do so, and that’s a good thing.

 

This article indicates that Evangelicals are taking a step in the right direction.

 

Having said that, I want to encourage them to take the logical next step…

 

Because if this article only teaches Evangelical women about the dangers of abuse from an individual man, but does NOT acknowledge the ways that Evangelical teaching and culture increase the risk of abuse, then the authors are straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel.

 

If Evangelical women and men are still being taught about “headship” and “complementarianism” and that women must obey their husbands in all things… then Evangelicalism is setting people up for abuse.

If Evangelical teen girls are still being preached at about modesty, but Evangelical teen boys are still not being preached at about consent… then Evangelicalism is setting people up for abuse.

If Evangelicals are still being taught that divorce is never okay unless one of the partners has been proven to have had sex with someone else… then Evangelicalism is setting people up for abuse.

If Evangelical parents are still being taught that they must hit their children in order to force obedience… then Evangelicalism is setting people up for abuse.

If Evangelical parents are still being taught to reject and even disown their children if their kids turn out to be LGBTQ… then Evangelicalism is setting people up for abuse.

If Evangelical men are still being taught that they must establish dominance and control in their families in order to properly fulfill their role as husbands and fathers… then Evangelicalism is setting people up for abuse.

If Evangelicals continue to insist that abortion is never okay, even when a girl or woman has been raped, and therefore that the needs of a girl or woman are not as important as protecting the genetic material of a rapist… then Evangelicalism is setting people up for abuse.

 

It’s GOOD to take the first step of acknowledging that abuse is wrong, teaching women (who are the most likely victims of abuse) to recognize it, avoid it, and escape it. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

I hope Evangelicals will soon realize that the next step is to examine the ways their official and unofficial doctrine sets men up to feel okay with committing abuse, and sets women and kids up to accept abuse; and that they will start working to fix those things.

 

Essential

We’ve had to think a lot, over the past couple months, about what is “essential” and what is real.

As it turns out, CEOs are not essential, but grocery clerks are. Wall street bankers are not essential, but truck drivers are. Politicians are not essential, but epidemiologists are. Wars are not essential, but social services are. Restaurants are not essential, but food is. Realtors aren’t essential, but housing is. Clothing stores aren’t essential, but seamstresses who can make a mask are. Haircuts aren’t essential, but hospice care is. Physically showing up at a church or a bar or a stadium is not essential, but fellowship is. Travel to other countries isn’t essential, but leaving the house to walk around and exercise is. Many of our jobs are not essential, but having the means to get food and shelter is.

We’ve seen that “the economy” is a fiction that we’ve shared for ages because it was a more convenient way than bartering to keep track of who owes favors to whom. “The economy” isn’t real. Food is real, and starvation is real if you don’t have food. Viruses are real, and they will really eat your living lungs given an opportunity. Friends and family and neighbors helping each other in an emergency is real. People providing necessary goods and services to each other is real. Pieces of paper being used to measure whether an individual has worked hard enough to deserve food and shelter – that’s not real. And the holes in the story of “the economy” are now threatening to unravel every structure that human society has built around it, now that it doesn’t work anymore.

And death is real. It’s the one reality that everyone must confront sooner or later, no matter who we are, what we believe, or what we do.

And because death is real, the single most essential reality while we strive to delay its coming is this:

Human beings need each other.

We need each other for survival, and we need each other for comfort, and we need each other’s touch, and we need each other for meaning and purpose, and we need each other for beauty and art and music and poetry and laughter and love and being fully human. We need each other’s strengths to compensate for our weaknesses. We need each other’s knowledge to compensate for the areas where we as individuals are ignorant. We need each other to make difficult, even sacrificial, choices to keep each other alive and healthy. 

Most of all, we need each other to be fully ourselves.

That is real. That is essential. Everything else is a distraction.

How full is the Church?

Now.

Not Easter Sunday, but now.

NOW is the time that we see how full the churches are.

For being the church does not mean showing up on Sunday to sing old songs together, and have coffee together afterwards.

Being the church right now means showing up on Saturday to drop off a bag of groceries on the doorstep of someone who can't safely go to the store for themselves.
AND disinfecting the outside of the packages, just in case.
AND leaving before the people inside can come out to thank us, so we do not risk transmission even for that brief moment.

Being the church means NOT showing up on Monday to work, to protect the elderly and immunocompromised family members of our co-workers and customers.

The measure of the Church is not how full of people the buildings are.

The measure of the Church is how full of self-sacrificial love its people are.

Do we love our neighbors as ourselves?

Then do we love our neighbors enough to refrain from embracing them, when we miss their touch?

Do we love our neighbors enough to stay at home being bored, when we miss going out?

Do we love our neighbors enough to lose money by not working, when we desperately need money?

"Greater love has no one than this"...

Is our love great enough to lay down our normal lives for our friends?

Great enough to go ON laying them down, day after day after day, for weeks and maybe months?

By tradition the door of a church was painted red, in memory of the Passover.

Do we love our neighbors enough to stay in our own homes and wait for Death to pass over, and tell our neighbors to do the same?

Do we love our neighbors enough to heed the advice of doctors, and ignore our own deep desire for normalcy in favor of keeping each other safe?

Even if it takes longer than we can afford to wait, financially or emotionally?


Truly, when the Tempter comes, he comes offering not evil things, but good things.

He comes not offering us power to harm, or sex that exploits or betrays others, or dark forbidden magics, or even the knowledge of good and evil (for we already know what is good, but find it hard to do; we already know what is evil, but find it all too easy).

Temptation offers us no illicit delights, but the quiet delights of normal, good, and necessary things.

We are tempted by the quiet delights of going to a restaurant and sharing laughter with friends.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of taking our children to play at each other's houses while we have coffee with other adults.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of wandering around a store to buy stuff we don't really need.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of cracking jokes around the water cooler with our co-workers.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of gathering together in groups and being human together.

But to accept the Tempter's offer is, as in the beginning, to open a gateway for Death to enter the world.


If on Easter Sunday the big buildings with the crosses on the roofs are full of people embracing, and shaking hands, and singing together, and sharing a meal together, and sharing in all those necessary human things that we long to do so much that it hurts...

and thus sharing our air, sharing whatever pathogens are on our hands, sharing with the whole flock what it takes just ONE sheep, infected unawares, to begin spreading...

If we do not love our neighbors enough to endure hardships both small and great to defend the most vulnerable among them...

If we do not love our neighbors enough to be still, and wait...

Then the buildings may indeed be full.

But the Church will be

Empty.





- John M. Munzer

Trump isn't the disease. He's the symptom.

He’s the most visible, ugly, and virulent of the tumors. But he isn’t the cancer.

The disease is fear, and both liberals and conservatives are riddled with the infection.

Fear that if those God-hating gun-grabbing tax-loving welfare-loving America-hating SJW libtards get into power, they will take away everything we hold dear – our values, our freedom, our livelihood, even our lives if they get the chance.

Fear that if those dumbass redneck ammosexual racist sexist homophobic climate-change-denying Trump cultists retain power, they will take away everything we hold dear – our values, our freedom, our livelihood, even our lives if they get the chance.

The biggest problem with Trump is not the stuff he’s bad at. It’s not that he has bad policy ideas. We’ve had lots of presidents with bad policy ideas and survived. It’s not that he’s bad at diplomacy, makes volatile situations even more volatile, and is pushing us into an unwinnable war – we’ve survived that before. It’s not that he’s incompetent – we’ve had incompetent presidents and survived. It’s not even that he’s corrupt – we’ve had corrupt presidents and survived.

The thing we may not survive is the one thing he’s good at: Deepening division and contempt between liberal and conservative Americans. The relationship between our two groups, like any relationship, can survive conflict, even heated and angry arguments; but it can’t survive contempt, and that’s what he sows all day, every day.

Evangelical Trump voters often explain their choice by saying they voted for a politician, not a pastor. But in fact, choosing a President is a lot like choosing a pastor. You need someone who can take a bunch of prickly, opinionated people and get them all on board with the same message, the same goals, the same plan, the same budget. You need someone who can convince the unconverted. You need someone who’s good at resolving conflicts between people who ordinarily wouldn’t talk to each other, by appealing to common ground between them. You need someone who won’t compromise on issues of personal integrity but will compromise on ways and means to achieve common goals.

What you DON’T need is someone who goes out of his way to attack and insult half the congregation (and half the church’s staff) every Sunday, who shouts about how evil and stupid and unhinged everyone who disagrees with him is and how they’re a threat to the church’s values. When you get a pastor like that, you very quickly stop having a church and start having a schism.

Likewise, our country needs a leader who can get people that disagree about means to at least acknowledge common goals such as strengthening the economy, preventing wars, ensuring that everyone gets a fair shot at making a decent living, ensuring that everyone can afford health care, ensuring that everyone’s rights are upheld, ensuring that we are safe… and come up with a plan that ensures that everyone’s needs and concerns are at least respected and taken into consideration, even if they can’t all be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

What we have instead… is Donald Trump, a guy so abrasive that even a number of his own voters and party members dislike him. A guy who can’t keep staff because no one wants to work with him. A guy who attacks anyone who disagrees with him, even if he hired them to give him advice. A guy who goes out of his way to make liberals and conservatives angry at each other, every day, because he can’t stand to not have his name in the paper for even a moment and has learned that negative attention is easy to get. A guy who would rather threaten civil war if he’s removed from office than simply try to defend his actions if he can, or admit that they were indefensible if he can’t.

That’s the real threat he represents. That’s why he’s the most virulent of the tumors in our increasingly angry and fearful society… because he doesn’t try to decrease the anger and fear, he feeds it and feeds on it.

But:

Getting rid of him, whether by impeachment or by voting, will not cure the disease. It’s a necessary first step, but by no means the last. Removing the biggest tumor doesn’t cure the cancer, not when the body is riddled with the damn things.

We’re going to have a LOT of work to do, treating the disease itself.

It will take a hell of a lot to get us to stop attacking each other and start trying to work together to make a better society, especially since on several hot-button issues (abortion, LGBTQ, guns, the environment, how much government regulation is helpful vs getting in the way, how we ought to spend tax money, etc) we now have very different ideas of what making a better society MEANS. It will take a hell of a lot to get us to stop being afraid that the people who disagree with us are going to destroy us, stop assuming malicious motives from each other, stop being contemptuous of each other.

It will take a hell of a lot to even start bringing the disease into remission. It may even be too late for a lasting cure at this point. It may be that it’s progressed too far to eliminate, and that we will always have this disease and will always have to pour a lot of time and resource into treating it.

But we must either get busy treating it, or get busy dying from it.

© John M. Munzer