Money and Your Local Church: A Layperson's Thoughts

It's amazing, but it's also not very amazing, that there are those of us in the body of Christ who can go so long not knowing what the Bible has to say about certain topics. Many of us even blindly believe there are things in the Bible that are simply not there - "this too shall pass" comes to mind, "God will never let you go through more than you can handle," and even "It is better to cast your seed onto the belly of a whore, than to let it fall to the ground" (yes, there are people who think that's a Bible verse).

But it's even more challenging when a piece of actual Scripture is misquoted, misrepresented, or manipulated in such a way that Christians and non-believers alike develop a false idea of what the Bible says on certain matters. These are more challenging because of the difficulty in separating what the verse actually says from the way it's paraphrased - it's easy to do a word search on biblegateway.com and show someone there's no "belly of a whore" verse. But if a paraphrased and distorted version of Scripture becomes embedded in someone's memory, it's difficult to put that verse or passage back in its proper order and gather again what was taken out, or take out what was added.

The best example I can give is the idea that the Bible says: "Money is the root of all evil." This is so often repeated that it's even a cliche amid secular circles of the world. Even my favorite band Pink Floyd gets it wrong in their classic song "Money."

In fairness to Pink Floyd, however, the actual verse contains much more substance and wouldn't fit the meter of the music. The quote in question is from 1 Timothy 6:10, which actually says:

"The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" - that's the first part, the part that's become shortened and changed - and continues, "for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." (NKJV) 

The actual verse, and the context of Biblical teachings on money and finances, reveal far more than our pithy paraphrasing: that money itself is not the root of evil, much less all evil, but rather the worship and idolatry that develops when one loses sight of the good God desires for us to do with money. This verse even expounds on how destructive that greed can be to one's faith and general life.

If money was the actual root of all evil, a lot of things wouldn't make sense. People who live by the false paraphrase and not the actual Scripture are faced with some tough questions. For example, how do sins not related to money or greed have their root in money when none is involved? If two people commit the sin of, say, fornication, or if one person takes the Lord's name in vain, how can this be traced back to money?

A social media post that reeked of the ignorance sparked by misquotation of Scripture asked, "If money is the root of all evil, why do churches ask for it?", implying that if a church claims to teach from the Bible, it displays hypocrisy in asking for tithes and offerings. But as we've seen from the actual verse, this philosophy is not a Biblical one. This would contradict the teachings of the epistles in the New Testament, wherein the apostle Paul instructs believers to help their local churches in many ways, among them materially, while also warning leaders not to become greedy. 

Also, if one believes "money is the root of all evil," and seeks to avoid such evil, that person then sins against their own conscience by accepting a wage from their employer. Fortunately, the amended form of this verse is a lie to which no Christian is bound.

As a sinner myself, I'm certainly not immune from ignorance of the Scripture. In my case, it's usually willful. I used to scoff at the idea that a pastor should be paid for his work. I glossed over Paul's instructions to the various churches, and was blissfully unaware of the apostle's words in 1 Corinthians, chapter 9: he elaborates that, though he has not used this privilege among the Corinthians, those who preach the gospel have a right to be supported by the church(es) to whom they preach.

Speaking of making a living as a pastor of a church, as my edgelord attitude toward a minister's wages faded in light of what Scripture teaches, I began to see just how perilous an honest preacher's position can be. If a pastor preaches only the truth, that pastor runs the risk of unsteady job security. I speak this from experience within my own local church during the past two and a half years.

During the height of the pandemic, my church implemented a mask mandate: worshipers were required to wear masks. This greatly offended certain congregants, who left our church because of it. Their ire wasn't eased when my church began a campaign to help get as many people vaccinated as possible.

Then came 2021. My pastor bravely, publicly condemned the January 6th Insurrection in no uncertain terms. This caused more exiles from our congregation. Then, this year, he released a book denouncing Christian nationalism, and explored nationalism as an entity itself. The book has received much attention, though you certainly wouldn't know it if you'd never attended my church before, as my pastor has upheld his conviction that he should not use our pulpit to promote his literary work. Not all of the attention was positive, however, as - you guessed it - the book's message (and even its cover) rubbed some people the wrong way.

Less congregants means less tithing, which means the threat of a preacher - and church staff, from sound engineers to janitors - being without a salary. Our church also uses its tithes for mission work, including a program that teaches English to refugees settling in America, planting multicultural churches, and supporting children in Kenya and drilling water wells there. If our church had suffered a catastrophic loss of membership, certain people in Kenya may not have access to water. 

Tithing also helps those within the local church who are in need. As one of our deacons preached just this morning, the "loner Christian" is not a Biblical Christian. There are no instances in Scripture of an apostle or disciple going it alone, the misunderstood lone wolf. "A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgment" (Proverbs 18:1). The idea that one doesn't need to go to a building once a week, and can "worship in their own way" is tough and edgy on the surface, but it's a philosophy built on sand and not a stone; it is not a Biblically founded Christian life. Thus, if a church is a community of believers, that community will inevitably have needs and troubles, to which their brothers and sisters can minister with their tithes and offerings. We forget this in our isolation, which so often leads to a worship and serving of self rather than God.

Fortunately, however, despite the backlash my pastor received for his preaching of the truth, God was faithful to protect us from fiery arrows, and our church thrives. We have even grown since the departure of so many whose sociopolitical ideologies outweighed their spiritual priorities. 

What a job, the ministry. It's such a strange position, when adhering to the truth is a risk to your employment and livelihood. "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12). There are many megastar evangelists we can all name whose aversion to strict Biblical truth and the needs of the underprivileged puts them in no danger of the unemployment line. I'm grateful God has given me a community whose leaders are brave and faithful enough that they would risk such hardship. Therefore, a church's response to God's generosity is to in turn be generous to its own, so that they as a local body might spread the Gospel and minister to the needs of the suffering. And it starts with a wise and godly understanding of the role of money - and of good and evil - in a Christian's life.

Incident At the Sonic Drive-In

There’s something humbling about going to the Sonic Drive-In on foot. The Hyundai-jockeys all around you stare like you’re some kind of novelty. Which, in a way you are – you’re at a drive-in fast food place, driving nothing but a pair of Rockports.

It can make you feel rather small. But that feeling, the shrinking feeling when you know everyone is gawking at you, doesn’t matter much when you’re there to buy your last meal.

Nothing much mattered then. It didn’t matter that I didn’t drive. Too many medications made my brain feel like soup. The anomaly of being a pedestrian at the drive-in was lost on me as I pressed the button and ordered my greasy last meal before I sent myself to the gallows. Eating Paleo, or some other such healthy meal, when I planned to leave the world just an hour or so after would have struck me as pointless. I hadn't even closed and locked the door when I left my house that ugly summer day. Why bother? What did it matter? I wouldn’t be back.

It was quite a shock when the fog was so suddenly cleared. When you sleepwalk through every day, it’s jarring when something jolts you awake. A bright beacon of orange made its way through the haze, and there she was – Allison (so we'll call her for privacy's sake), the pale, skinny ginger girl with whom I’d have graduated a class above or below me, just a few years ago.

I was so alerted from my zombie-like trance that I even had the awareness to wonder what Allison of all people was doing back in our tiny town, working as a carhop at Sonic no less. Basic small town stereotyping, and the traditions in which those stereotypes are based, tells you someone who had been as popular and accomplished in high school as Allison didn't come back to town to work at Sonic. I was sure Allison had left town to go to college, as did everybody who had such a chance. In those days, we weren't as disillusioned with the debt-ridden idea of college as we are now. Something important must have brought her back. Maybe she blew her parents’ money. Maybe she couldn’t handle it. Maybe someone in the family got sick. Maybe it wasn't something as mundane as a summer job or just a realization that college wasn't for her. In any case, the Sonic Drive-In certainly wasn't where one who knew the protocol and promise of small-town youth would have pictured Allison.

There's nothing shameful about working as a fast food carhop. It's hard work. Like any job, a carhop puts up with any number of problems and frustrations. The Iraq War, for instance. If you're old enough to remember, in 2003 the United States and a coalition of other nations went to war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq; France, however, refused to join the effort, much to the ire of some Americans, who expressed their disdain for the French by calling french fries "Freedom Fries." I am not making this up. People were rolling up to Sonic and, with a straight face, ordering "Freedom fries." And of course, the carhops and cooks who repeated the orders were expected to use the absurdly jingoistic term, or risk a lecture on patriotism by the customers. 

But that's another story, I guess. Anyway, whatever brought Allison to work at the Sonic Drive-In that ugly summer of 2007, hardship or nothing special at all, it must have slipped her mind. There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment in her big green eyes – only shock. The same was written on my face. I could feel it (I could feel something!). It was probably the first time my expression had changed in weeks.

Allison was shocked to see me, and I her, but somehow I knew it wasn’t the surprise of seeing an old schoolmate after so long. It wasn't my disheveled appearance, sweaty and clad in a wrinkled plaid shirt. Somehow, I knew that she knew. And somehow, she knew that I knew what had made her eyes grow so wide.

It was some kind of telepathy. No one can tell me any different. We didn’t say a word to each other for the longest, quietest moment. As far as I remembered, our paths had never crossed much in school. It wasn’t a reunion of pals. This silence was different. She knew. I can’t be convinced otherwise.

Allison began to stammer something. It wasn’t about my order, my final order on Earth – she wasn’t looking at the brown bag on the red tray she held. Her big green eyes were still on my muddy brown ones.

“I'm sorry you’re hurting,” I felt her say.

I felt her say it. Or, I felt her think it. It was telepathy, some kind of holy intervention in the form of a para-psychological phenomenon.

“I can’t do it anymore,” I replied. That must have been how my mind answered. Or my heart. I don’t know how much the heart is involved in telepathy.

When Allison finally spoke, with her mouth and vocal cords, it was nothing profound or moving. She repeated my order and delicately handed me my last meal.

She knew. She knew what morbid milestone she held in her hand.

I said, with actual words, “thank you.”

We stood there for another long moment. If anyone had seen us – and come to think of it, I don't remember there being a single car parked at the drive-in at that moment, as if they'd all just faded into the ether as soon as I placed my order – they’d have thought we were both dumbstruck by some unseen, unspoken revelation. As if one of us had just told the other something shocking. And, I suppose, that was indeed the case.

I know that was the case.

I couldn’t take all that beauty anymore. If I was going to do what I’d promised myself to do, I had to leave right then. All that wordless beauty, as sappy as it sounds, was breaking through to me. I couldn’t have that.

I backed away, as if the burger and fries that had just changed hands had been a hostage exchange.

Fifteen or so minutes later, I found myself in a swing in the park, eating my greasy burger and fries. I don’t remember the walk getting there. Despite still being in a daze, I had my wits about me just enough to realize I was the only person in the park. There were no dog walkers, no Frisbee players, no parents and squeaking children. Maybe everyone else had looked out of their windows and seen how ugly, how heavy a summer day could be, and had the sense to stay home.

Stuffing my fries in my mouth, made all the more salty by my tears, I felt the gentle sting of Allison’s telepathy from Sonic again. “Don’t do it. Please, don’t do it.”

I spat the tear-soaked food from my mouth and had a good sob – an actual heaving sob, not just streams of tears. When I caught my breath, I replied to Allison’s mental communique, too exhausted to argue with such mind-power. I used real words.

“Alright,” I managed to croak. “Okay. Okay, I won’t do it.”

I took a drink from my Coke and winced from the acid like it was a long swig of whiskey.

All that maudlin beauty was enough torture to convince me to do, or not to do, anything.

“Just lay off with all this sap before it makes me sick,” I thought. 

I hoped Allison didn’t pick up that last bit of my groaning, grouchy inner monologue. It seemed like such a nasty thing to say to someone who’s just saved your life with the power of telepathy. 

Album Review: Pink Floyd's "Obscured By Clouds"

You had no idea Pink Floyd released an album called Obscured By Clouds, did you? No idea. All you know is “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb.” You don’t know nothin about nothin!

But to give you an idea of how somewhat uncharacteristically stripped down Obscured By Clouds is for a Pink Floyd album, its foreboding opening instrumental title track was used by my high school football team for our entrance music as we approached the field (go JC Chasez Mennonite School! Class of ‘04!). We couldn’t have instilled such primitive fear in our opponents with more polished, intricate Floyd instrumentals like “A Saucerful of Secrets” or “One Of These Days” (unless we skipped forward to the “I’m going to cut you into little pieces” part). 

“Foreboding” isn’t a rare adjective to Floyd’s music, but the grittiness of this guitar and prehistoric synth-dominated title track opened an album that found the band hurriedly, though craftily, writing and recording the soundtrack to a French adventure drama, La Vallee (that is, The Valley, for the laypersons). Two of the songs contained were straight ahead rock, the rowdy instrumental “When You’re In” and the searing, crunchy “The Gold It’s In the...” (I don’t know what the gold is in, that’s just the title of the song). The band had approached such heavy territory before on an earlier film soundtrack album, More (the film of which was coincidentally directed by Barbet Schroeder, who was also at the helm for La Vallee); two songs from that album, “The Nile Song” and “Ibiza Bar” had approached outright heavy metal.

Soundtrack work was nothing new to Pink Floyd, but most of More, and their contributions to the film Zabriskie Point, were very Floydian – psychedelic pieces carefully textured and shaped by painstaking improvisations and ideas conceived on stage. Obscured By Clouds, however, found the band on a time crunch, locked away in a studio in France, in a rush to get back on the road, then back to Abbey Road to finish what would be their next album, Dark Side of the Moon.

The fact that this album had the misfortune to be released not even a full year before Dark Side undoubtedly contributes to its lack of a reputation. It would become their first album to crack the US Top 50, reaching #46, but Dark Side of the Moon’s decade-plus long stay on the album charts will always overwhelm such a feat. And, unlike their previous albums, none of the ten songs here were shaped over time by live performances before being hammered out in the studio – the songs here were “proper” rock songs, conceived and recorded on the clock. The result was an atypical Pink Floyd album, but a striking and highly enjoyable one nonetheless.

The jaunty, jangly, catchy “Free Four” enjoyed a bit of airplay when released as a single, though it’s doubtful that fans appreciated Roger Waters’ grim cynicism in the lyrics exploring death and futility. It also contains possibly his first reference to being “the dead man’s son,” a keystone in his music’s inspiration as time went on and his father’s death in World War II made more of an impact. The song was probably the first in Floyd’s entire catalog to so prominently feature that trademark grimness that made Waters’ lyrics so great; “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk,” from the band’s groundbreaking debut The Piper At the Gates of Dawn, had been his first sole credit with the group. Unless I’m misinterpreting the nonsense in the poppy psychedelia, those lyrics held a shade of that cynical English wit, though they lay under the surface of Piper’s electronic, whimsical wonderland. But the other band members, and many fans, agree that “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk” is the lone throwaway from their legendary debut.

Their next album, A Saucerful of Secrets, saw Waters’ songwriting breakout, with such staples as “Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun” and “Let There Be More Light.” But it’s the psychotic “Corporal Clegg” that hinted – or, rather flatout boasted – of the subjects and themes that would dominate Roger Waters’ later songwriting, both with Pink Floyd and in his solo career. The song told the tale of an amputee war veteran and his alcoholic wife. Grim things indeed, but grim things only the English can turn into an overbearing pop tune complete with kazoo coda.

For the next five years, though, Waters’ lyrics mostly stayed within the frame of the psychedelic noodling that made Floyd such an underground sensation throughout the world (except, so far, the States). But “Free Four” was a sudden release of a dour world view, the bassist sculpting a rotting skull with a gap-toothed grin.

Elsewhere throughout Obscured By Clouds, the lyrics follow, more tightly than at first glance, the theme of the La Vallee film, exploring the simple but daunting themes of unalterable change and the dangers and depths that lie beyond one’s comforts. The film explores the same: a group of explorers search for treasure or gold or some spiritual journey or something in a mysterious and dangerous place in Papua New Guinea simply marked on maps as “obscured by clouds.” The characters in the movie see a slow shedding of what they know as civilization until they themselves become trodden by the unknown things so far from their homes. The lyrics of Obscured By Clouds reflect this of course, which in a strange way gives it parallels with the themes of Dark Side of the Moon. 

As that album was a master portrait of the pressures of society than can lead one to absolute madness, this album slowly tracks the pressures that come with drastic change. The mid-tempo “Burning Bridges” is self-explanatory, as is David Gilmour’s “Childhood’s End” (incidentally the last Pink Floyd lyrics not written by Waters until 1987, years after he’d left the group on acrimonious terms). Purportedly with the Vietnam War in mind, Gilmour’s lyrics are much simpler than Waters’, but anything more detailed and sardonic would have been ill-fitting for such a frank lecture about the death of innocence.

While the basic narrative of the album is what makes it so strong, there are times its instrumental passages are, at the risk of hyperbole, spellbinding. “Mudmen” is my second favorite Floyd song of all time, in case you were wondering what’s my second favorite Floyd song of all time. In La Vallee, the song plays as a group of mud-covered tribal warriors or shamans, or whatever they are, in hideous, gargantuan masks dance and stalk towards a transfixed character. The song is a beautiful slowburner, grinding from melancholy to ecstasy, and was the first Pink Floyd song penned by Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright; it was a great dose of the musical partnership they’d form twenty years later on The Division Bell and after Floyd was done "for good" in the 2000s.

Speaking of Wright, his vocal on “Stay,” one of the band’s few “ballads,” is almost spine-tingling. The keyboardist was often critical of his voice, but its lonesomeness fits the loss and finality of the song’s lyrics. Closing the album is “Absolutely Curtains,” a gorgeous yet frightening instrumental that seems to perpetually build and build until its stunning crescendo leads into an excerpt from the film – a choir of tribesmen singing words in an exotic language that, if interpreted, would dash the mystery that lends itself so perfectly to the song.

Obscured By Clouds isn’t usually included in the lineage of Floyd works that were essential to the development of Dark Side of the Moon as is, say, the track “A Saucerful of Secrets” in 1969; the twelve-minute instrumental had been a thematic, conceptual, multi-part story, which led to “The Man & The Journey Suite” that became a focus of the band’s legendary live repertoire during the same era, further shaping their penchant for storytelling via instrumental texture. In 1971, Meddle had been vital to Dark Side of the Moon’s birth, if not in terms of structure, in terms of the quantum leaps in studio knowledge and innovation. 

But Obscured is exactly that – fogged over in the history of Pink Floyd as it relates to the elements that ultimately led to Dark Side and beyond.

The rub is, it shouldn’t be. The album tells a story, its music shapes the events and moods, and an overall, solid narrative focusing on change and departure runs consistently throughout – just the way the narratives of madness and societal pressure shape Dark Side of the Moon. Granted, Obscured By Clouds had a movie to follow. But even in that sense, Pink Floyd looked beyond slapping some mood music onto forty minutes of tape and chose rather to make a proper album using La Vallee’s story.

Though obviously decimated in sales and memory by its successor, such was the success of this record throughout the faithful European market in 1972 that it eclipsed the film for which it was recorded, which performed lukewarmly. A dispute between the band and the film studio arose, for whatever reasons those disputes always arise, and in response, the studio re-titled the movie to The Valley Obscured By Clouds, to hopefully capitalize on the positive reception the album enjoyed over the film, particularly in France.

Much like the treasure and spiritual whatnots sought by the characters in the film, Obscured By Clouds is in many ways the post-Piper, pre-Dark Side album that holds the most reward for those who seek it out. It’s not only a solid and well-written album, especially considering the rushed atmosphere of the sessions, but it captures Pink Floyd in a very non-Floydian snapshot.

It’s the perfect definition of a hidden gem.

-from my book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems (but you don't have to buy it)

The Exhausting Legalism of the Secular World

I'm a religious person. My chosen religion is Christianity. I sometimes get flak from fellow Christians for using the terms religion/religious; those words seem to imply a sense of strict dogma, not to mention the word itself being originally tied to the word bondage. But I don't mind that. I want to be "a bondservant of Christ," forever tethered to Him, unable to escape.

Now that my attempt at piety is out of the way, here's some cynicism.

I've long been amazed - and confounded - by how similar the "secular" world is to the "religious lifestyle" (or, what many people think of a religious lifestyle). The rigorous regulations and rituals that are used to caricaturize we religious folk are abundant in a society that claims no official civil faith.

My mother, father, grandparents, teachers, and every pastor I've ever had - combined - have never imposed on me such a stringent and lengthy list of things I'm not allowed to say for fear of condemnation (a more modern term for condemnation being "cancellation"). The list of these forbidden words and terms is always changing and expanding, making it hard for one to keep up with what's linguistically kosher and what is not. 

I don't have that problem in my dirty little spiritual life. I believe the Scripture, that collection of ancient documents and epistles we came to call the Bible, to be the Divinely authored, Divinely edited word of God, and therefore in no need of addition. And, I certainly consider it blasphemous to propose subtractions, e.g. The Jefferson Bible. In this Book, I'm taught that if I were to say something terrible - something truly terrible, something that breaks down and berates others - my sin is forgiven through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I'll not be condemned to hell, or cancelled from His love (apologies for such a sappy analogy, but if it fits it fits). And, my brothers and sisters in this faith, should they abide in it, will be true to edify and encourage me to do better, not to distance themselves from me like I'm ripe with moral Coronavirus (unless of course I unrepentantly persist in such sins).

Along with this list of naughty phrases is a tight and non-negotiable list of places I cannot go and businesses I mustn't engage without compromising my soul (at least, my metaphorical soul if one looks at it from the secular point of view). I've been commanded by secular voices that I shall not enter Hobby Lobby because of its owners' stance on birth control, that eating at Chick Fil A is unclean because of its owners' position on same-sex marriage, that if I went to the theater to see Mulan I'm supporting oppression in Asia and should be cast into darkness, that Colin Kaepernick is a wolf in a sheep's disguise because he sat down during the National Anthem, profaning a Sunday football game, making Nike shoes an abomination fit for nothing but the fire.

Oprah have mercy on you if you need gluten free buns to feed your three kids on a hectic afternoon and Chick Fil A is the closest and most convenient option. Your ideological salvation and purity is at stake. Perhaps there's some loophole in the sociopolitical manuals that will allow this, as long as a sacrifice is made to a gold calf, blue donkey, or red elephant. Or one of those weird Green Party carved images.

Speaking of devils, in conversations with non-religious friends, I've noticed something interesting: the ratio of times I've warned them about the wiles of Satan to the number of times I've been warned about the snares of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is probably 10:1. In fact, I can't remember the last time I told an unbelieving friend how ensnared they are by the devil. That's either a reflection on my part of how tactful I am when it comes to discussing matters of religion, or a reflection of how bad I am at preaching such truths.

I thank God that He's never cast me aside if I stray from His commandments, and that His commandments are lovingly crafted for my growth, not to exalt myself as more woke or more patriotic than my neighbor. I'm grateful that He is faithful to love me and teach me to do better should I do wrong. That His grace and understanding permit me to shop at Amazon. That He's set my feet upon a rock and not on eggshells. That He keeps me from being drafted to fight in the Culture Wars, as He's already brought eternal victory through the Cross.

The secular world can follow its own bulls and codes and gods. I'm simply not pure enough, progressive enough, patriotic enough to do so. I wasn't born so holy. It's not in my DNA, I suppose. I'm weak - I need a God of grace and love.

Poem: "A Lily Among Thorns"

Written in 2013 for a woman with whom I was in love. Though I long ago fell (or grew) out of love with her, when I rediscovered this piece of strained melodramatics I realized there are bits of this and that, that I rather like. Except, I hope never to feel "unworthy" to talk to someone - anyone - ever again.

 

“A Lily Among Thorns”

In a dream,

as all poems begin it seems,

I saw chains on every brilliant thought,

every one-liner and wonderful remark

I saw men and women who had made me laugh,

made me stop to think 

like Augustus Caesar in the dark –

Their memory all bound to some ugly thing,

some kind of hackneyed pain

The kind that surrounds a joke

told by someone lost but not forgotten,

the kind found in sappy poems full of hope

I saw Heath Ledger being carried to eternity

I saw Lenin and Lennon scoffing

I saw John Belushi fading away

down in West L.A.

I tried to awake, I wanted to go home

but somebody grabbed my arm –

Belushi himself in a bumble-bee robe

I spoke to Belushi’s ghost,

“Belushi, you’ve shown me only malice,

greed, apathy!

Depressing haunts swirling around what

should cheer me most

Belushi I beg you, show me some tenderness,

some depth of feeling,

preferably in green or blue eyes

with no venom in its smile

and no vengeance in its wit,

a beautiful mind with no bitterness or guile”

He raised his brow and pointed to you,

like Gettysburg eclipsing Waterloo,

like a sudden burst of laughter from those

who mourn,

like a lily among the thorns

You’re a duchess with hands covered in paint

You’re a bringer of good tidings 

from days of yore,

a contrast to my raving complaint

You’re the one in the bookstore,

un-abridging the abridged Gaston Leroux

And I’m leafing through Louis L'Amour,

unworthy to say Wordsworth to you

from the book Amen, Bad Luck To You

Poem: "Amen, Bad Luck To You"

The day after I was Saved

after the congratulations and

we're proud of yous and you're so braves

and my mother's relief and elation

and delicate voices to playfully chide me

I felt the sensation 

of something writing inside me

It wasn't the finger of God

writing His laws on my heart

It wasn't some warm and happy feeling

tracing across my being

or a psalm full of fresh air and art

I'm not sure what piece of me

it was writing on,

this thing not a threat, not a treaty

Something not quite as bloody and meaty as a rib

But some just as tangible part

just as touchable

Not quite the soul

Not quite the heart

or some other piece just as glib

It was something dark, for sure,

something separate from God

Not competing for room

or to regain its domain

or proclaim my failure and doom

or map out my guts to forever trod

Whatever it was, all the same

it was only there to write

Amen, bad luck to you.

and leave me as quickly as it came,

at no exceptional time of night

It left its fingerprints 

in its scratchy, scribbled cursive

Though I'm sure it has no power itself

It has no unholy possession or hold

No aim so subversive,

nothing nearly so bold

or bursting with spite and pride

But the message is there

somewhere inside

Amen, bad luck to you.

I can't be persuaded otherwise

that the message wasn't deliberately timed

It came just after Jesus advented

just after the drying of weeping eyes

just after everyone at that potpourri scented

Baptist church told me warm and lovely things

Just after I was Saved

I wasn't gripped by a demon

or met with beginnings of birth pangs

I didn't froth at the mouth and fall in the fire

or so much as double over in pain

When it etched its words inside 

my miscellany and mire 

Amen, bad luck to you.

That was all, and it was gone

unheard from since that day

Like whoever scrawled Sodoma Gomora

on the walls of Pompeii

to tell them they were going to hell

Or whoever painted Viva Cuba

and the last lovey dovey note

of a revolutionary song

on the walls of a prison cell

They were there, inside, they wrote,

and were gone – 

Amen, bad luck to you.

from the book Amen, Bad Luck To You

Why We Love Conspiracy Theories

More than any time in history, America is saturated in conspiracy theories. It seems almost every aspect of society and pop culture is touched by the idea of a conspiracy of some sort. There are the classics, such as the moon landing being faked, filmed in a basement by Stanley Kubrick, to more bizarre ones like the flat-earth theory and the claim that the Beatles never actually existed, to the dangerously delirious - the Sandy Hook shooting never happened, 9/11 was an inside job, vaccines contain tracking technology, and JFK Jr. will appear in Dealey Plaza to claim the Presidency for Donald Trump (despite the younger Kennedy being dead for 22 years).

It's almost as if conspiracy theories are en vogue. If it was 1997, conspiracy theories would be the Billy Corgan ZERO t-shirt. Why do we embrace them? Why do we cling to them?

The answer is disappointingly simple - they excite us, and they comfort us.

We can look to the biggest conspiracy theory in all of American history for the perfect example: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Theorists have long rejected the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting JFK, that the whole thing was a plot by the CIA, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, or other powers that be. Many more far-out ideas have been posited, such as Kennedy was killed because he planned to reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The facts are, unfortunately, much more boring - Oswald, a young Marxist loner with delusions of grandeur, shot the President to make a statement, to be somebody for once. I write "unfortunately more boring" because a great leader such as John F. Kennedy deserved a better end - a man of his accomplishments deserved a better assassin, as morbid as it sounds. Even a rogue government and/or alien-related conspiracy would have been a more fitting means to such a great man's tragic end: it's disheartening and disappointing to accept that one of our greatest Presidents was simply slain by a born loser - who in turn was slain by another born loser, with no mob connections, no secret CIA motive. The true backstories of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby are too real - but the fantastical explanations, the intricate and complex, the convoluted, take us away from such a reality. A nice, exciting conspiracy overshadows the tragedy with grandeur. Therefore, aliens and the CIA.

The outlandish and wondrous, bluntly put, make us feel better. They give us a noble quest, to expose the truth. They add adventure and intrigue, put us in a James Bond-like role, a covert mission to gather intelligence and expose the Deep States and Pizzagates of the world. Conspiracies take us from our glum place as mourners to freedom fighters for truth. And when they send us on a spiral of violence and fanaticism, they make us martyrs - heroes even - when we storm the Capitol shirtless, wearing face paint and a horned helmet. 

Meticulously compiled evidence that dashes these conspiracy theories brings us back to Earth. Back to the grind of the mundane and terrifying. It's terrifying to think that an ordinary nobody in our midst could take it upon themselves to kill the President - it's exciting to think it was the work of an ominous boss-level boogieman. 

Inside, we're too horrified - and inconvenienced - to accept that there's a new virus beyond our control that's killed millions of people worldwide, that we don't have as much reign over nature as we think. So, the virus must be a hoax, one we have a duty to expose; if not a hoax, a plot by Anthony Fauci and his cronies to force people to wear masks, so they can receive hefty kickbacks from the big mask industry. 

We're too delicate to consider that our candidate lost an election fairly. We're too dogmatic to learn the intricacies of elections, because that knowledge might prove us wrong. We hate being wrong. We don't like things that dash our narratives, so they must be false. It must all be fake news - "Fake news!" being code for "I'm too fragile to handle that."

Maybe my armchair psychology is my own way of romanticizing why we love conspiracy theories. Maybe the truth is even more humdrum than human insecurity -

maybe we're just bored. Maybe we can never be satisfied as the needy humans we are: not even a global pandemic satisfies our lust for action. 

Or, maybe we've seen too many movies.