EGREGIOUS!

SO FAR OUT ON A LIMB OF SHAME!

In the evenings here in New Orleans, so close to the sea, the wind shifts about 3 PM and warm Gulf breezes come in. For over a month that evening breeze is loathingly dominated by the smell of oil! An entire metro, and the surrounding coastal areas are breathing in the smell of petroleum products. It's wretched and disgusting and infuriating, because the mess has to be gigantic for this to be the case. You can smell it across the Gulf coast, from Florida to SW LA. YUCK!

I've watched this current oil ecological disaster on TV (It dominates the news here with good reason) and sit simply gobsmacked at the complacency of the nation and even the world.

We all knew BP was lying about the size of the gushing oil catastrophe happening just south of here... 4,300 gallons per day my ****! Scientists estimate it is conservatively 129 MILLION gallons as of yesterday, but MORE LIKELY 149 MILLION gallons! Imagine that much oil spewing into the Gulf! Imagine the ecological nightmare that is not even yet imagined! What will it do to plant life? Sea Life? Coral reefs? Shore lines? We can ALREADY see the damage to the barrier islands, already turning brown, where the coastal grasses are dead, globbed tar balls coating the shoreline. We are told by BP is is "Gulf sweet crude" a euphemism for lighter weight brown oil, as contrasted to the molasses black tar from other places. I don't know - I'm certainly not an engineer - but what I see if jet black and thick as, well, tar!

Imagine the HUNDREDS of thousands of gallons of TOXIC chemicals that were spilled into the spewing oil. ALL in the ocean... all holding down ginormous oil bubbles under the sea! Imagine these toxic chemicals as they NOW CONTAMINATE the entire food chain in the gulf - ALL GULF SEAFOOD BEING CONDEMNED as toxic and NOT SAFE!


























This nightmare is going to have implications beyond our wildest darkest imaginations... it could kills the Gulf - one giant dead zone! It could destroy THOUSANDS of miles of coastal barrier islands, wetlands, marshes that act as protection for the coast from hurricanes. Imagine a hurricane grabbing this oil in a couple of months, even a small storm, and scattering it across the Gulf, inland through the water ways for unimagined swatchs!

AND now it is in the water stream - heading into the Florida keys and already showing up on shore... imagine with it starts hitting Virginia, Maryland, NC, New York, Connecticut... Imagine the culpability to Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti as it trashes their coast lines.

WHAT'S WORSE:
It could have been so easily prevented. To start blow out protectors, the major learning from the Santa Barbara disaster in 1969, was never implemented - thanks US Government, lobbiests, congress and of course our friends in the socio-pathic narcissistic oil industry. Why was this never dealt with?

I saw the CEO of BP talking out of his *** to congress yesterday. Nice... "We spend tens of millions of dollars on safety, beyond what government agencies require." MY *** you do! Really? Why were so many, multiple fail safe procedures not followed? Why do NONE of your wells globally have blow out protector valves? Why did NOT ONE OIL & GAS COMPANY DO A-N-Y contengency planning for this nightmate scenario? All of their engineers are focused on profit - not on responsibility. All of their "safety" spending is show and not go.

What' is just unbelievable is how these leaders will not be held accountable. They will destroy a region, decimate the aquamarine industry in five states minimum beyond recovery possibility, especially Louisiana, still only 65% of pre-Katrina levels, and no one really cares.

Never mind the ecological crime - the greed crime, the reckless arrogance of the entire coporate culture of the west.

Will mutual funds drop BP? Yea, right. There is our drug habit for more money to feed! "We have a responsibility to our shareholders." What about your responsibility to the human race, and to God before whom you will answer?" "What about your children, your grandchildren?"





















Our culpability:
We can't be bothered to go two more blocks to avoid BP to send the collective message that we will punish them, hurt them where it counts, that we demand change in their behavior, that we will not passively endorse such criminal reckless behavior.

Shell too! Don't forget Shell who has been creating an ecological nightmare in Africa for decades... paying off the despot leaders and not compensating the nations, helping the people, for the precious resource we steal from them... legalized white crime emperial behavior... so we can all have it cheaper.
Simple Acts:
1. Boycott BP and Shell. Write simple three line protest letters. Believe me the weight of these make a difference.
2. Avoid plastic products when possible. It's impossible to avoid, but limit it.
3. When you see packaging that is about wow to your eye candy in marketing, let the company know it. Laws in the UK and Europe banned this wasteful irresponsible packaging practice.
4. Use alternate trans when possible and pool your errands, etc.
5. Work where you live, live where you work rather than commuting dozens of miles. You should try it - when it's YOUR community, you treat it differently.
One last vomit
As we continue to watch this disaster, let your congressmen know how infuriated you are-no matter what state you live in. Let the President know. If you live in the UK, NZ, etc, email the Embassy... these protests are noted.

I think the federal government is trying, but it is dependent upon the industry to make it happen. Yet BP continues to act in an arrogant self righteous manner. Demand the Fed's literally declare Marshall Law and take over the operation, demanding immediate full access to everything and become the decision makers. Order the lawyers out and let the engineers make it happen.


AS GOD PEOPLE:
What bothers me personally is the lack of furor amongst God's people. It seems we've married political parties, and they support and justify this recklessness by the oil industry, profits and all... There seems to be a lackadaisical approach to ecology by God's people.

All I can say is... what about our kids? Their kids? What about the commandment to steward the creation? That command was NEVER revoked. What about the character and nature of God that we must reflect?

Are we so consumed in a synchrotism with our culture that we cannot even appreciate the egregious nature of what is happening before our eyes? Worse, are we simply apathetic and drunk on affluence, materialism and greed to have what we want, now.

I ache to see God's people demand God's creation be treated wisely, that people are treated wisely and the sociopathic nature of industry be rejected, and even rebuked, punished and barred. I ache to see people who follow and imitate God who imitate Him in this area of life.

Harsh agreement

I don't agree with everyone all this time. I know you never feel that way, right? Okay, enough disclaimer. Don Miller's comments today are very severe love. I face this all the time and the topic is more relevant than almost any I know!

Having Right Theology Does not Mean You Know God

If it’s harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven, it’s harder for an elephant to thread that needle than for a person who has right theology to not get arrogant. How many people do you know who have read one John Calvin book and threw it down in a spiral while doing a touchdown dance as though they’d accomplished something themselves?

Five years after releasing my third book, Searching for God Knows What, the publisher came to me and asked if they could reprint the book. The book has sold strong for all those years, and they wanted to bump it into a second life. As a writer, I was excited about the idea. Before Million Miles, Searching was the book I was most proud of, so I agreed to put a new cover on it and write some extra material.

The two main components I added to the book are a new introduction in which I argue that right theology has no redemptive power at all, that redemptive power only comes through a relationship with Jesus. I explain why right theology has become a false idol, and when it’s used as a pacifier to make us feel right rather than redeemed, it breeds arrogance and is bait for an offensive, controlling personality. Many Christian leaders belittle other pastors and thinkers in the name of right theology. This is distracting, and by distracting I mean it’s a song and dance that distracts people from seeing Christ.

The second addition to the book is a personality theory I wrote and printed in the final chapter. I call it The Genesis Theory and it explains, I believe, how our personalities have developed based on the depiction of the fall of man in Genesis 2 and 3. I’m hoping to qualify this theory through trial at a Christian University. The seed of this theory is in this reprint.

Anyway, here is a bit of the new introduction. It’s only a bit of it, but it will give you an idea of what the book is about. Hope you like the additions. Thanks so much.

From the introduction of Searching for God Knows What:

….and through a dark night of the soul, I came to realize salvation happens through a mysterious, indefinable, relational interaction with Jesus in which we become one with him. I realized Christian conversion worked more like falling in love than understanding a series of concepts or ideas. This is not to say there are no true ideas, it is only to say there is something else, something beyond. There are true ideas involved in marriage and sex, but marriage and sex also involve something else, and that something else is mysterious.

If we have a controlling personality, in which we like to check things off of lists, this is going to be extremely hard for us to understand and embrace. God give us no control, really, over this “system” of relationship. Introducing somebody to Jesus is not about presenting ideas, then, as much as it is introducing a person to a Deity who lives and interacts. Evangelism, then, looks like setting somebody up on a blind date: God does the work, we just tell them about him and where they can find him.

You might be getting upset by this. You might think I am saying truth should be thrown out, that theology doesn’t matter. But this is not what I’m saying at all. What I’m intending to illustrate is our drive to define God with a mathematical theology has become a false God rather than an arrow that points to the real God. Theology can become an idol, but it is more useful as guardrails on a road to the true God. Theology is very important, but it is not God, and knowing facts about God is not the same as knowing God. Let me give you an extreme example of how very bad we have gotten about this in the west.

About the time (and I share this in the book, so forgive the repetition) I was thinking through these things, I was teaching a class in Canada, and my students were freshman college students, all of whom had grown up in the church. The class was called “The Gospel and Culture.” I started the class with an experiment, I told the class I was going to share the gospel of Jesus, but I was going to leave something out. I wanted them to figure out what I’d left out. I talked first about sin, about how we are fallen creatures. I told some stories and used some illustrations. I talked about repentance, and again told some stories, then I talked about God’s forgiveness, and I talked about heaven. I went on for some time. And when I finally stopped and asked the class to tell me what I’d left out, after twenty or more minutes of discussion, not one student realized I’d left out Jesus. Not one. And I believe I could repeat that same experiment in Christian classrooms across North America.

What I came to understand, then, is Christian conversion is relational. It is not theological or intellectual any more than marriage is theological or intellectual. In other words, a child could become a Christian if they had a mysterious encounter with Jesus, and a simple thinker could become a Christian if they had a mysterious encounter with Christ, and even a person who was a Muslim or a Buddhist could become a Christian if they had a mysterious relational encounter with Christ. This is the only answer at which I could arrive that matched the reality in which we live, the complexity of scripture, and the mysterious invitation offered to us by Jesus.

I hear the masses saying, “But no! A person cannot believe in multiple Gods and be a Christian.” Let me counter with some questions:

Can a person have bad theology and be a Christian?

Has your theology ever been corrected, and were you really a Christian before?

Is your theology all worked out now so you have no more reason to study, and if not, are you a Christian?

If you believe a person’s theology has to be right to be qualified for Christian conversion, then you are saying a person comes to know God, in part, because he has right ideas, and I respectfully disagree. Do I think right theology is important? Absolutely, but I do not believe it has any agency to convert anymore than directions to the doctor’s office has the power to heal.

I have a friend who countered, adamantly, that unless a person understood and agreed with the theological idea of total depravity, he could not be a Christian. I asked my friend when it was that he understood the idea himself, and he answered his sophomore year in seminary. I asked him, then, when he had become a Christian, and he told me when he was in the third grade. His reasoning was obviously insane, and I don’t think he is alone. I believe that God wants us to engage with and be transformed by His Word. So does that mean someone from another faith who encounters Jesus might have their ideology corrected? Maybe. What I’m saying, though, is that God doesn’t exclude someone from his saving grace because they don’t have the correct theological checklist. And for those of us who judge and condemn them, why would we stand in opposition when the God we love and serve is himself so adamant about being in relationship with them just as He is with us?

Would you do me a favor as you read this book? Would you be willing to grow and expand your understanding of God and how He works? If your understanding of Christianity is relatively conservative, it may surprise you that our theology is remarkably similar. It’s just that I am going to continue to pull power and beauty away from facts about God and give them to God himself. To the degree your right theology is your false God, this is going to disturb you. You are going to revolt, inside, because the thing you have been placing your security in (namely your ability to come up with and defend right ideas) is going to be threatened. But make no mistake, I am not attacking right theology, I am simply making theology a window rather than a wall.

On this journey, you may travel through the same dark night of the soul through which I have come. But on the other side, I assure you, is Christ, and you will love him for what He has done. You will stand bloodied from the battle, kneeling before Him, knowing He is all the hope you had, and hopefully, in a delightful moment of freedom, realize He is always the only hope you need.

If you’d like to read the entire book, you can find it at your local bookstore, Barnes and Noble, Borders or Amazon.

Playing Nice with Others

I get excited, heated and use this venue to often express my anxiety, frustration, anger and to scream the "emperor has no clothes on" ...you know, to say things that need to be said, and others seem too nice, too reserved, too conservative, too self protecting to say. Somebody needs to say it like it is... I'm not important, nor am I vying for anything. I am doing what I love, what I'm called to and no one can stop me - so I have the freedom many others don't.

With that said, I also want to influence others, often those who could not stomach what I say or how I say it here. Okay, I've been accused of "not playing well with others" and well, okay, uhm, hmm, it's true ...sometimes. Okay, frequently. I don't have any remorse or regret for my free speak, but to have influence with others, I need a medium through which I am a bit more careful in what and how I speak. I need to write so they can hear...

Therefore, I have a new blog where I promise to "play well with others". You can take a look anytime: http://mikebrantley.wordpress.com/

In the mean time, keep checking in for the raw side of me. :-)

Cheers.

Defining Community

When we returned to New Orléans, it was 10 months after the storm that now marks every part of life. Our neighborhood had no wildlife - no birds, squirrels, and little life...2 hours within a block in four directions.
















We, as a community, have worked to build the real "community" and our friends here now tell us we are the vortex of the neighborhood. Others say they're jealous of the "community" we enjoy on our few blocks.
















About 2-3 times a year, we host a simple block party... Last Sunday (May 8th), we were planning to have people there 3-6 PM... At 7 PM, there were still 30 plus there... the left over people who stayed laughed and enjoyed life as it should be.


















Care enough to interfere with peoples' lives and love 'em hawd (Hard in NOLA venacular).


















C'est chez nous!















Where yat, ma dawlin'!?

Video from Haiti - "Telling our story"

How do we live in the world and thrive?

Christians and churches wrestle with being "in the world", and not "of the world", and yet, not being elite, or arrogant, or paternal; how to be honestly and sincerely with those who do not cling to Christ, and not compromise, or lose our desire to follow Him.

Check out the next piece from our friend, Mike Frost:

Is this real or sarcasm?

I saw this adbvertisment, recruiting ad in a periodical recently... I just find it hard to believe it is not a sarcastic hyperbole, but I am afraid it is....

"Christians Developing a Fellow shipping Community of serious believers paramounting God's Word. Non-communal, independent lifestyles, land share; make a countryside home, first century church, near unique college town, libraries, spring water. [contact info]"

I read this with disbelief! My response is %()W*#(@&#&@ REALLY!?

Let me see....
Non-communal, independent lifestyles spoken in the same sentence with first century church, and believers paramounting God's Word.

Wow! How cultural biased can God's Word be interpreted?

I had some one say recently, finding what we do difficult, that this person could not see him/herself "interfering in peoples' lives".

I am so glad Jesus interfered with my life. I am so glad Jace interfered with my life, along with Chip, Neil, Jim, Tim, Paul, and my mates in CRM/InnerCHANGE. Thanks for loving Jesus by loving me, and daring to interfere with my life, for seeing interdependent life as the way Jesus calls us to live.

Peace and grace to those "interferers"