Flame graduated last May, but hip-hop is still alive and well on the campus of Boyce College. Boyce College student Spencer Harmon (not to be confused with Where’s Waldo) fronts a new group called “Beats and Babbles,” and he has just released a new self-titled album. With song titles like “What Hoekma Said” and “Nerds By Day, Rappers By Night,” how can you go wrong? You can download the album now from iTunes. Check it out. You might also take a look at their website BeatsandBabbles.com.

In other news, the artist formerly known as “Crossword” is now a faculty member at Boyce College. His 2004 album is available for free download here.

Chris Matthews takes umbrage with John Hagee’s appearance at the Glenn Beck rally. I don’t think the conversation here is all that helpful or illuminatng—except in one sense. This is the most theology I think I have ever heard discussed on “Hardball.” The discussion touches on theodicy, sin, judgment, and the nature of God. That’s pretty unusual for this program, but it does show where some of these characters are on the most important questions in the world.

One more thing. Even though Matthews is a Roman Catholic, he regularly opposes Roman Catholic teaching on his program. It seems a bit inconsistent to defend the church against the likes of Beck, but that is what he does.

“The point: being poor is not the only way to radically follow Christ. Some people are called to it. I have long felt a tension between all that I learned from the Kid Brothers and Rich Mullins about identifying with the poor and the weak, versus my holy responsibility to tend to my family’s spiritual and physical needs. Had Rich ever married, I’m certain his wife would have appreciated a nice dress every now and then, or a bouquet of flowers, or a decent kitchen, and she probably would have lovingly insisted that he not give all his money away, especially after she bore his children and needed to buy diapers, and school supplies, and shoes for goodness sake. And the other thing is, Rich Mullins had hit songs that are still making money. He gave a lot of his money away, but he also had a constant stream of it flowing in. Lots of it. And I’m sure the ministries he supported with the surplus were grateful that he channeled it to them for Kingdom work.

“Money isn’t the root of all evil. The Bible doesn’t say that. Here’s the verse: ‘For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.’ (1 Timothy 6:10) We’re called to keep watch so that we don’t fall in love with money. To be sure, wealth is a heavy burden and isn’t for everyone, just as poverty is a burden and isn’t for everyone. The people of the church are varied in strengths and weaknesses. Money itself isn’t evil. In fact, money can be a great tool for Kingdom work. It’s easy to tout ideals about how wrong it is to be wealthy until you’re on the receiving end of someone’s generosity.”

(HT: Robbie Sagers)

“It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined ‘revival’ and ‘turning America back to God’ that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.

“Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we’ve relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We’ve tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership as long as with it there is sufficient political ‘conservatism’ and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.

“Too often, and for too long, American ‘Christianity’ has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it. There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barrabas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah…

“Mormonism and Mammonism are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They offer another Lord Jesus than the One offered in the Scriptures and Christian tradition, and another way to approach him. An embrace of these tragic new vehicles for the old Gnostic heresy is unloving to our Mormon friends and secularist neighbors, and to the rest of the watching world. Any ‘revival’ that is possible without the Lord Jesus Christ is a ‘revival’ of a different kind of spirit than the Spirit of Christ (1 Jn. 4:1-3).”

As you can see, this is a must-read. Read it here.

Medical care is not value-neutral. That much is clear from this study. In fact, the researcher concludes that doctors are ethically bound to inform their patients how doctors’ values inform their clinical decision-making. Not if their values inform their decisions, but how.

If you are interested in reading the study, you can buy and download an electronic version here.

“Is it not here that we find the central truth of our faith? Our sinful nature is a simple reality… But is it not possible that we might have different ideas about how we came to have that nature? Does the saving power of Jesus vanish if sin becomes something that developed through natural history, rather than appeared all at once in the Garden of Eden? It seems to me that there is a conversation to have here, beyond simply drawing a line in the sand. Satisfactory answers to questions like these are truly ‘How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.’

“At BioLogos we have made our peace with evolution, and it has been liberating and even faith-affirming. We encourage conversations to further that agenda and make no excuses for that. We are not destroying Christianity. We are saving it.”

Bottom line. No historical Adam. No original sin. No 1 Chronicles 1:1, Luke 3:38, Romans 5:12-21, 1 Corinthians 11:8-12, 15:22, 15:45, 1 Timothy 2:13-14, Jude 1:14 or the entire substructure of biblical theology. Yet Giberson somehow thinks he’s saving Christianity. Hardly.

About a year ago, I found out about the conversion of one of my childhood heroes—Christian Hosoi (read about it here). He was a professional skateboarder, and I thought he was the best in the world. He was big-time in the 80’s, but the 90’s were a different story. He got all strung-out on drugs and eventually landed in jail. But that wasn’t the end of his story. Hear the rest of the story in the “I Am Second” video above.

I think it’s amazing how the Lord works. For Hosoi, the text God used to quicken his heart was 1 Kings 2:1-9—the story of David’s exhortation to Solomon as David lay on his deathbed.

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[Below is my post from last year about Hosoi's conversion.]

From Christ Air to Christ Heir

Folks have frequently asked me about the picture of me on the skateboard in the header image of this blog. Usually the questions have something to do with whether or not the picture is real. The answer to that question is yes (though readers should know that getting a still-shot in the air is pretty easy; landing, however, is another matter altogether). Truth be known, I haven’t been a serious skateboarder since the late 80’s. This picture was taken at my parent’s home in 2005. I had decided to try my old skateboard out while visiting my folks, my friend Barry Joslin snapped a picture, and voila. I became what every authentic skateboarder despises—a poser. But at least I got a good picture out of it.

One of my favorite aspects of this photo is the board that I am riding. The board is over 20 years old, and it was the best deck that I ever owned. I loved this board in large part because of whose name was on it. Every skate-rat that I knew in the eighth grade was a devotee of Tony Hawk, but that’s not whose name was on my board. Hawk was way too mainstream, and I considered him to have sold out to the man (Ironically, I think I myself now to be the man, but I digress). My board bore the name of one of Hawk’s main rivals—Christian Hosoi.

Hosoi dazzled a generation of skaters with his high-flying half-pipe varials. He consistently won the highest-air events at skate competitions, and he was pretty amazing to watch. Ten feet above the edge of the ramp was nothing for him. What he was known best for was a trick that he did called “Christ air.” This stunt consisted of his flying-high above the top of the ramp, stretching his arms and legs out in the form of a crucifix, and then putting his feet back on the board just in time to hit the half-pipe again on the way down (see picture at right).

The irony of Hosoi in those days was that his name was Christian, his nickname was “Christ,” and his signature move was “Christ Air.” But Christian was no Christian. Not by a long shot. His success eventually gave way to drug addiction and prison. He was sentenced to 10 years in 2000 for drug charges but was released in 2004 for good behavior.

Why am I writing about Christian Hosoi today? Because I just read a story in The New York Times that reports on the spread of Christianity among the professional athletes of extreme sports. Christian Hosoi’s story is mentioned in the article. It turns out that something remarkable happened to him while in prison. Apparently, God got a hold of him, and he converted to Christianity. Now he is a pastor at a church in Huntington Beach, California.

I can’t imagine a better ending to his story, and probably didn’t imagine it when I was a fan in the 80’s. The Lord’s arm is not too short to save (Isaiah 59:1), and I am grateful to read that it has saved Christian.