neurological dryer lint

a few more things about below. if you have a problem with my opinion, please read this for a little more clarification.

1) i have problems with ideas and methods, not people. people can be changed. i was. i still am. my issue is clearly with religion, with rules and big complex systems and senseless tradition. i don't like those things. the people that do them and live by them are still in process and hopefully allowing God to move them to where he wants. but the ideas and methods are damaging and distance people from God. they hurt things, not help them. i'm sorry if what i said hurt anyone. not that enough people read this to be hurt... but just in case.

2) the movie is not perfect. the way it portrays things isn't perfect. it's a filmmaker's honest view on the problems with the way a lot of Christians live and operate with others. it should be a wake up call to those following Jesus. i don't enjoy anyone getting mocked or ripped on. i do feel it's necessary, though, for people who consider themselves 'Christians', by whatever definition they give that word, to REALLY look at how they live their lives, consider how substantial their relationship with God is, and how other people see them. again, Jesus, our model for how to do things, did things radically different from how people expected the Messiah would. he was close with his father, and he sought out broken and outcast people and loved them and cared for them and didn't judge them, even though it was his right. and the religious people had severe problems with that. and Jesus knew it. our lives, if we're following Jesus, should begin to look something like his. that is what i hope will happen, first in my own life, and in everyone else's. and i do feel that if what we're doing is ineffective and the world is screaming that fact at us and it takes a movie that mocks us to wake us up to that fact... well then it's probably good that the movie came out. we are usually in pretty desperate need of awakening. i really hope people will see that, just like in everything else, some Christians do things differently than other Christians. i used to defend the subculture to artie when he would go off on things like this... i'd say, hey, maybe Bibleman toys or Jesus-themed chap stick is helping someone. most of that was out of my desire to not offend anyone and to be a nice guy. but i realized, some of this stuff does do more damage than good, and how is that beneficial to anyone? now i see where he was coming from. sorry, artie. :) in reality, most of it is just there so certain people can feel like they are good Christians because they buy that stuff. but me buying skater clothes and shoes doesn't make me a skater. i have to go and skate to do that.

so yeah. all that.

i just got home from quaker steak & lube, best wings i've ever eaten. and we ate a lot. nine of us killed 280 wings in a little over an hour (a pic of the table afterwards is here). my stomach is yelling at me. argh.