Food for thought

Heretic. That is the name of an episode of "This American Life" about a preacher from Oklahoma City who attended Oral Roberts University and was a major force in the Pentecostal and Charismatic Evengelical Movement until a few years ago when other evangelicals branded him a heretic because he stopped believing in and preaching hell.

He is a scholarly pastor, and he has studied the books of the Bible in their original Greek and Hebrew. In fact, he has spent a good deal of time trying to trace his understanding of Biblical scripture to their oldest extant versions because he wanted to be sure that his understanding was as accurate as possible. This episode told the story of how that led him to what he calls a revelation from God that a truly loving God would not send anyone to Hell, that there is no Hell. Everyone is saved. And it changed his life. It nearly destroyed his 5,000 people a Sunday church, and he went from being one of the most influential pastors in the United States to one of the least influential pastors in Oklahoma City all because he preached a Gospel of Inclusion.

Hellfire and demons, to God loves everyone. I reccomend you go to the "This American Life" website and find their archive page for the year 2006. In Novemeber (I think) the episode "Heretic" aired, and it is an amazing revelatory story that made me understand a lot more about people of strong faith in my life, and it actually gave me a new and refreshing perspective on faith (No I am not going to go all crazy Bible thumping on you or even on me). Go the page, stream the episode, come on back and talk about it in the comments.

Just a day

A very rainy afternoon that I walked out into and got soaked. There is a new pair of jeans being laundered as we speak though--that is nice. I can wear them tomorrow while it rains.

We are watching "Children of Men" and my roomate Renee is pissed because of how it deviates from the book. I think it is pretty good. But I never started the book.

I feel like there was a half formed blog entry in my brain just a short while ago, but now it is gone.

And I am mad at amazon.com because I ordered "How I Met Your Mother" Season 1 on DVD on Sunday, and it hasn't even shipped yet which is total crap. Just total and complete crap.

Can half a glass of cab-sauv make you forget things? Maybe that is what happened.

Sometimes I wonder how much I allow my readership to dictate what I put in my blogs. Do I leave things out because I fear it will upset anyone who I know reads this? Do I scale particular topics and postings in such a manner as to ensure (or at least encourage) comments? Because somehow no comments makes it seem like whatever you wrote maybe didn't really exist (if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?). So, do I try to write comment friendly entries? I don't always comment on the blogs that I read, but I am sad when the blogger goes away for a while.

Podcasts are my new favorite thing. NPR ones especially. The latest episode of This American Life (which is actually a rerun from a year or so ago) is kind of amazingly brilliant. It is called 81 words, and you should all go to itunes right now and download it.

Spring, spring everywhere

I spent the day training my replacement, and if it was boring when there is only one of me, well. . . yeah. Not bad, just weird.

Also, was listening to the podcast of "This American Life" today, and I was at the restaurant they talked about/used in their experiment. I was there on Saturday night. It is pretty fabulous, and I would reccommend it, but it was strange to hear about it like that. I also think that I may be the mean friend at ACT, and that my own personal meanness to stupid teenagers made me the cool sub. I was not nice to them, and that made me awesome. Go to thisamericanlife.org and listen to the lure of the mean friend, or you can download the podcast on itunes for free. I don't think that I am the mean friend in any way other then as a teacher. The rest of the time I think I am not aloof enough to be in any way mean. This makes more sense if you have heard the podcast.

I was going to write a whole lot more today, but it is gorgeous out, so instead I am going to go check out my neighborhood and jog and whatnot.