When some people tell the story, following Jesus marks the end of all problems.

Birds sing, the sun comes out from behind the clouds, and you never have to eat leftovers again.

This has not been my experience.

Like every other facet of the human experience, conflict is not eliminated by the life of faith, just changed.

Recently, I had an opportunity to talk a bit about this at Lifelink Memphis.

After the talk, my words were smuggled out, one syllable at a time, by audio ninjas and lovingly reassembled inside the button-thingy below.

You don’t have to click on it.

But the ninjas will be disappointed in you.

Download

It’s a point of some irony that those who most loudly maintain that the Earth is a personal expression of God’s creativity and artistry are often the most silent when it comes to protecting that art from mistreatment and vandalism by humanity.

This disconnect is not lost on Jonathan Merritt.

His new book Green Like God gently takes this contradiction to one of the most conspicuous areas of environmental silence in American society, evangelical christians.

Being a bit outside of that target audience, I found the early chapters challenging to my patience. I kept asking myself, “How many Bible verses do you really need to justify doing the right thing?”

But over the course of the book I came to respect Merritt’s commitment to developing a solid framework for environmental concern, one grounded in the Biblical narrative and designed to outlast fads and shifts in public opinion.

You won’t find fancy or emotional language here, just patient teaching, sound theology, and the gentle encouragement to step outside political camps and view the earth from God’s perspective.

Merritt takes not just environmentalism, but consumerism and social justice as well, strips them of their divisive political trappings, and presents them as the spiritual questions that they are.

Green Like God invites evangelicals, in their own language, into a conversation for which they are long overdue.

No related posts.

One day some the members of Jesus’ inner circle came to him with a question about judgment.

Trying to get their theology straight, they pointed out a man blind from birth and asked where to pin the blame.

Was it this guy who did something wrong or was it his parents? What caused God to curse him like this?

And Jesus explained to them that it wasn’t the anger of God or the judgment of God on display in the man’s life, but rather the assignment of God. That his condition was not a curse, but instead a canvas for God’s work to be displayed. (ref)

And then he restored the man’s sight.

Strangely, it seems that every time disaster strikes these days, whether it be hurricanes in New Orleans or the recent earthquake in Haiti, there is no shortage of supposed followers of Jesus rushing to blame the victims and declare the “judgment” of God upon them.

The very ones who could rattle off from memory that,“…all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” seem to spend these times of crisis concocting theories about how somehow the recipients of tragedy are especially sinful and deserving of divine destruction.

Enough already.

The assignment is clear, the canvas is prepared.

This is not a time for theories or excuses or recriminations. This is a time for action.

Let’s get to work.

—–

For information on the situation in Haiti, places to contribute, and tips for avoiding scam charities see this post by Peter Greenberg.

You can also contribute through my friends at Help Heal Haiti.

Image credit despardes.com

Once upon a time there was this guy named Jesus, you might have heard of him or even read his book.

One time at a major public address, he said that the people that followed him would be like a city on a hill: unmistakable, un-missable, un-hideable. A prominent feature on the skyline of society.

Which sounded kind of strange…until he described what his followers would be about. They would feed the hungry, they would clothe the poor, they would visit prisoners.

Not as a way to score points or impress people, but as a way to worship God.

Instead of courting favor from the powerful, they would serve and protect the powerless. They would not strive for wealth or status, but instead their success would be defined by the degree with which they were able to serve others.

And the metaphor fit, for a group of people that genuinely loved others without condition or reciprocation would be hard to miss.

But they have been missed. Sorely missed.

Although today more people today claim the title of christian than ever before, as a group they…okay, we… have never been more unrecognized, undistinguished, insular, and well…flat.

So much so, that at least in America, many now resort to advertising how different they are on billboards, t-shirts, bumper stickers, or any available surface, often ironically declaring their uniqueness in the most unoriginal styles possible.

Which leads me to wonder…perhaps what the world really needs is not more hype, but rather more height.

Is it possible?

Hit me with your best thought.

In which Doctor Harold Toboggans, scourge of Memphis, interrogates Ken Steorts about Visible School, the pursuit of dreams, and other delusions of adequacy.

See it now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mind Over Memphis – Visible School

As always you catch Doctor Toboggans own take on the story at his new url: mindovermemphis.com

Have you noticed how much time bloggers spend apologizing for not blogging?

How many times have you read something like this:

Sorry I haven’t posted in the last two days, my new job/unemployment/self-administered lobotomy has taken up a lot of my time lately. But to make it up to you, I promise to liveblog my entire upcoming root canal….

Well let me tell you that life happens. And when it does, sometimes what you really need is not approval-begging excuses, but a support group to fall back on.

You need people, good people. People you can count on, people who aren’t afraid to back you up or refer to themselves by cute animal nicknames, or even sell you wooden drinking cups.

That’s why when I took my blogging break a few months ago, I left with confidence knowing that the humor-blogging corner of the internet was safe in the capable hands¹ of my friends Lobo and Don Lewis.

Don Lewis with time on his capable hands

So imagine my surprise when upon my return to active bloggery I discovered that although Lobo had held up his end of the humorisphere², Olympic yak juggler, aftershave test pilot, and all around tough guy Don Lewis had fled the internet like a lisping tobogganeer, leaving nothing but tumbleweeds blowing at his humorium url.

Those of you who have been reading the Comma for a while may remember how this same Don Lewis, and his holding company Donco, once launched a hostile takeover of my blog. Back in those days Don seemed to think he could handle two high caliber humor blogs without breaking a sweat. Now somehow, the number of blogs Don is capable of handling seems to have dwindled to zero.

This is a mystery worthy of Leonard Nimoy and I have sworn to get to the bottom of it no matter how dark, smelly, or generally unwiped it may proved to be.

That’s why I am going to drive Don Lewis to the surface using the most dastardly means at my disposal…

This video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The concept is simple one that I learned in my Marine Corps days, I will punish everyone, everywhere with these merciless videos until Don Lewis comes forward.

Anyone with information regarding Don’s whereabouts will be rewarded with earplugs.

Start talking.

Are you on Facebook? Have the Ominous Comma experience delivered to your profile.

When I first moved to Memphis I realized right away that locals and motor vehicles shouldn’t be allowed to mix.

Even under the best of conditions they form unstable compounds, traveling in erratic, unpredictable trajectories which, in some unexplained quantum-mechanical fashion, are able to occupy all possibly lanes of traffic simultaneously, at least until interacting violently with similar neighboring compounds.

The only know method of intensifying this chaotic reaction is to add precipitation.

Your author practicing the suggested Memphis cold weather response

When introduced to the greater metropolitan area, rain is enough to cause spontaneous formations of rapidly bonded steel to accumulate on freeways and intersections throughout the region.

With the addition of snow, there ensues a cascade reaction of such severity that only the most intrepid researcher would travel outside his or her immediate neighborhood.

Bottom line: When traveling to Memphis this holiday season, leave your snow at home.

-

Listed at alltop.com, humor-blogs.com, and now Blogerella.

Last week Brent asked me to be a guest blogger while he was on vacation. Actually it was more like begging and I hate to see a grown man grovel so I said yes. I’m kidding, he paid me. Kidding again, he didn’t ask. I hacked his domain and hijacked today’s post spot because that is how I roll…

…Rickroll.

Hey at least I used the death metal version. Much less lame. Somehow Slayer doing Rick Astley seems unholy though, especially when set to the same video.

He also called for people to explain their thought process on writing humor. Since I couldn’t come up with anything else to write about I figured whatever, kill two birds with one stone. I love doing that because it saves time and makes the hippies and enviro-nuts mad at the same time. A win-win situation in my book.

Writing a humor blog is challenging. Every time I start my computer up I have to deal with my anti-virus and firewall software updates. That’s like twenty minutes right there, especially with having to restart the PC because some company told me their software isn’t really ready unless I reboot. Then Firefox decides to update as well. Then a Mythbusters I haven’t seen is showing on Discovery.

Still I preserver.

There were many times I wanted to talk about how an idea becomes a rough draft then develops into a final post. I would go on and on about all the twists and turns the idea took, sometimes even changing completely. I would explain how long they take to create from start to finish.

You can wake up now.

This would be like when you go to Open Mike night and there’s some moonbat explaining why every note is there, and the meaning behind each chord for like an hour. Usually it is a boring story of how their crappy song brings back memories of their dead uncle when in reality their relative was more like Uncle Ned on Family Ties.

Play the song already and pass the vanilla extract.

One thing you have to be careful using are obscure references like that one I just made. In the Uncle Ned (‘Say Uncle’) episode he downs a bottle of vanilla extract to Elyse’s horror and states: “What, did you want some?” Unless you have seen it you will have no clue what I mean and it wouldn’t be funny.

Explaining the joke is killing the joke by the way.

By now you might have figured out I must not have a thought process on writing a humor blog. I do. My creativity is like Neo in The Matrix. The rest of my brain is like Councilor Hamann who wonders how I come up with what I write about.

The only difference is that my humor isn’t going to save the world any time soon. But it does have a purpose: to entertain.

Isn’t that the most important thing in a humor blog post anyways? Well, midgets and monkeys are a big help too but they have to be entertaining or dressed up in scenes from famous movies.

—–

Great, but somewhat belated thanks to Chris Cameron of Angry Seafood for this rousing yet low sodium guest post.

Show this man some Comma love: vote this on Humor-Blogs.com

alltop.com

In the spirit of the holiday weekend, I thought I might share a live public address that I gave several years ago in Memphis about the role of dependence and independence in the lives of spiritual people.

Considering that it is me, jokes are provided but it’s not really comedy. It’s long, about 45 minutes, and I’m still trying to figure out how to make it downloadable, so it’s sort of stuck to this page. Sorry.

I use some strong language, offensive to atheists and churchy types alike, as I take to task the hypocritical christian culture that confuses so many with marketing and formulas and thick layers of artificiality, so be warned.

Due to a possibly slumbering sound tech, it starts in the middle of sentence but I think it will be alright.

This is it here:

Download

Happy Saturday,.

http://brentdiggs.com/blog/audio/Dependence.mp3

No related posts.

Although I am not normally known in blogging circles¹ for my wealth of technological wisdom any more than for my strenuous research practices or hard hitting journalism,² every once in a while, in the heat of blogging passion I have been known to tackle the occasional technical issue.

Of course my efforts usually do little to stop these issues, or even slow their progress as they rampage down the field of digital mayhem, heedless of my attempts to reunite them with the tender embrace of gravity; but as a Licensed Internet Resource I am obliged to make the attempt.

That or face discipline from a panel of my peers.

Just one of the peers I’m not interested in facing.

So in this spirit of foundless optimism, I present my latest intra-personal conversation… interrogation in the hope of sparing you, my dearest of all readers any unnecessary pain in your blogging endeavors:

WordPress Woes – A Fictional Interviewer^TM Interview

Fictional Interviewer: Well Brent, it’s been a while since our last interview, good to have you back.

ME: Sure.

FI: So is it true that you have your own weblog now?

ME: Yes. We’re standing in it.³

FI: How exciting.

ME: Well, its somewhere between total ecstasy and a tooth extraction.

FI: What?

ME: Blog ownership. That’s how exciting it is…You did ask.

FI: It was more of a statement, actually.

ME: Suit yourself.

FI: So, back to your blog. You’ve been using WordPress for a while?

ME: Yes it’s been WordPress from the beginning here at The Ominous Comma.

FI: So then, you must be aware that when you delete an entire category of posts like say Navel Gazing, the actual posts under that category are not deleted?

ME: Yes.

FI: And that those same posts will instead revert to the next highest category that they are assigned to, or lacking another assigned category, back to being uncategorized?

ME: Yes, I’ve always thought that arrangement was fairly well idiot-proof.

FI: But were you also aware that when you delete a “parent” category like say Entertainment with dozens of “child” or sub-categories, that those same sub-categories are also deleted, dumping your posts into an unsorted pool of chaos that you can’t re-categorize because those categories aren’t really gone but instead lurking in the depths of your database, refusing to link to anything, invisibly blocking all attempts at salvage? Did you know that Brent?

ME: That fact has recently come to my attention.

FI: So would this discovery of yours have any connection to the Comma’s recent fifty-percent reduction in its overall number of categories?

ME: (Massaging temples.) Isn’t there some childhood trauma of mine you should be hiding under?

FI: I’ll take that as a yes.

Moral of the Story – Don’t Mess With The ‘Press

So remember friends:

When writing, strive to be in a category all your own.

And when mucking about under the hood of your blog, be careful, or that’s exactly how you’ll end up.

Check it out:
Letter To My Subconscious
My Subconscious Responds
Apology To My Subconscious
The Harsh Demands of Internet Explorer
A Furious Feed Of Fantastical Facts