Nerd is my Gender
What's yours?
-
The possibility that the church has been wrong on the ethics of committed homosexual behavior — that’s a momentous question,” Gushee said. “It’s obviously one that people in the broader culture have determined a long time ago that the church was wrong about. But I would say that, from the perspective of any kind of understanding of Christian doctrine and Christian ethics, it is not an easy thing to throw (overboard) the majority position of more than 2,000 years.
-
Greatest church mural ever?!?
Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster this is for real!
Years ago I wrote a post in which I bemoaned the fact that no church would paint a mural of the scene in the Bible where Elisha orders bears to kill a bunch of teenagers. Well, a really talented comic book artist named Wes Molebash illustrated it based on my description. Here is what I wrote:
“That story is insane and here’s how I envision the mural. Elisha is standing in the middle of all these angry, bald hating teenagers. He looks really enraged and the caption out of his mouth says, “Do you know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby! You’re gonna die!” And then in the corner of the mural are two huge bears with hockey sticks. I’m not sure why they have hockey sticks but it seems a little tougher to me.”
Well, I found out last week, a church actually painted it full size! A guy named Scott Welsh sent me this photo, which is awesome:
I can’t even…
-
![This is what scholars think men in Israel looked like during the time of Jesus. If he tried to board an airplane today, he’d probably be hassled with racial profiling for looking too Muslim.
[Image of man with medium-tone skin, brown eyes, and thick dark brown hair and beard, similar to many Middle-Eastern men.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhszp8ZttL1qgm6edo1_250.jpg)
This is what scholars think men in Israel looked like during the time of Jesus. If he tried to board an airplane today, he’d probably be hassled with racial profiling for looking too Muslim.
[Image of man with medium-tone skin, brown eyes, and thick dark brown hair and beard, similar to many Middle-Eastern men.]
-
Sandperson: “But Lord, during the hardest trials of my life, why was there only one set of footprints?”
“Because,” said the Lord, “Sandpeople always ride single-file, to hide their numbers.”
-
How sick do I make this person? Let us count the ways!
Lazy Christians
Phew, safe here - not a christian.
Sex-Drugs-Rock Music
I’ve haven’t yet heard of the musical genre that is sex-drugs-rock, but I imagine it will be all over the Grammys in a couple years.
Baby Killers
This is a tough one… many times what seems like a regular period is actually a very early miscarriage, so I’ll put this one down as a “maybe”.
Party Animals
I haven’t played a good game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey for many years, and it’s been a while since my last pinata.
Sport’s Nuts
I prefer generic mixed nuts as opposed to the licensed kind, as they cost much less.
Roman Catholics
At first I wondered why this wasn’t included under the “lazy Christian” category, and then I remembered that Catholics actually have to work for their salvation.
Computer Freaks
Alas, I am still not a cybog.
People that watch TV more than study the Bible.
This… actually doesn’t apply to me. Wow.
People that talk to pets more than God
I don’t think anyone could possibly talk to pets more than God does, but I have neither pets nor god.
Fox Hole Religion
Yeah, I agree: on the battle field is a horrible place to try to distract soldiers from their duties with nonsense.
The Jews that are from the Synagogue of Satan
There is no Synagogue of Satan, but just in case anyone was thinking of starting one, don’t - you might make someone sick, and then they’ll put you on a list.
False Religions
Those bother me too. Hmm… maybe I should be the one holding this sign?
Racists
I feel you there, bro.
Lying Pentaco$stal$
This must be the 1st Church of Ke$ha.
Effeminate Culture
There goes half the nation, including anyone who’s ever watch the Oprah show and liked it.
Ankle Biters
Oh yeah, like mosquitoes! I hate mosquitoes!
Dykes on Bikes
Come on, they’re just trying to do their part to reduce CO2 emissions.
Money Lovers
I’m probably not capitalist enough for this.
Child Molesting Homosexuals
This definitely is a redundant listing, as priests would fall under the umbrella of Roman Catholics above.
Sex Perverts
This one might actually apply to me. After all, I like to do it with the lights on and the sheets off.
Rebellious
Um…
Women
I’m trying to reform, I swear!
And Mormons
Envious that they get their own planet? Admit it.
Well, that’s it. Adding up the tally, I score like 1.5 on the How Sick I Make This Person scale. I’m kind of disappointed, actually. I had no idea I’m so straight-edge! How about you?
-
19th Annual Testicle Festival - Come have a ball with Jesus!
What else would you expect from a patriarchal religion? :D
-
Jesus is my copilot…and my home security system.
Say you’re a criminal. Which home looks more inviting:
The house guarded by the invisible friend?
Or the house guarded by NRA’s finest?
-
Apologetics pick up lines
A few of the good ones:
Penis goes in, baby comes out. You can’t explain that.
Is that a banana in your pocket, or have you also been designed especially for me?
What happened before the Big Bang? I used this ridiculous pick up line on you.
Imagine the greatest possible sex in the world. Now, if it did not exist, then it would not be the greatest possible sex - therefore it must exist in reality, because to exist in reality is greater than to exist solely in the imagination.
-
If, as a Christian, the problem of evil does not keep you up at night, then you don’t really understand it.
John Loftus
-
I’m free!
I’m so happy to finally be a young, thin, white woman who loves young, hard-working white men! I realize now that it was a delusion, brought to me by the Evil One, that I could ever deny the fact that there are only men who love women and women who love men.
You see, sometimes that voice inside is really someone speaking to me, and that someone would be the Holy Spirit. Unless it’s Satan. How do I know the difference? It’s not always easy, but it’s a good sign that it’s God speaking to me when the messages align with what some middle-aged white men have recently decided that an ancient text was really trying to tell us.
I realize now where I strayed from the path. I tried to follow my own heart, tried to find my own happiness by being true to my genderqueer self. Only, the Bible doesn’t want us to be true to ourselves, because we’re made of sin, especially women. It’s only when I confess my selfish desires and sense of fairness and standards for empirical evidence that I can finally find God.
Thanks to the help of Exodus International, I’ve managed to see what lead me down my dark path. First, sensitivity: Their research tells me that I shied away from physical aggression and I never wanted to hurt others. I was also sensitive to criticism and always wondered whether I was good enough. ”Inability to be comfortable in one’s own skin has brought an endless quest to have someone else’s – and never succeeding. The years of failed attempts have created loneliness, hopelessness, dependency, and yet isolation. Even from God.”
Second, this may or may not be the result of an inability to relate to my mother’s femininity or to feel a strong masculine love from my father. Sorry parents, we still don’t know if it’s your fault, but we don’t want to rule that possibility out too soon.
Third, I was probably abused. Sure, I don’t remember being sexually abused, but we all know that repressed memories happen all the time! I also witnessed some intense physical situations between my parents when I was a young child. Who knows if that made me afraid of heterosexual relationships? Then there’s the verbal abuse of being told that I don’t fit in with the other girls, which might have made me conclude they’re right, I’m not a girl at all.
Fourth, puberty might have been too confusing. All those thoughts and feelings, and if nobody was there to tell me how to sexually pursue boys in a normal way, it’s easy to see how I could mess it up and go after girls instead. Luckily, science as filtered by Exodus International was there to see me through to the bright side of life!
No longer am I a slave to the ways of the world, to the uniqueness and diversity of humanity nor the wonders and mysteries of science. I’ve found freedom in my personal relationship with my invisible friend, unlike the rest of you billions and billions of selfish people who totally are so full of yourselves that you’d rather burn in hell for all eternity than live forever in eternal bliss, just because you hate God. What’s wrong with you?
-
Prominent Christian apologists convert to atheism?
[Cross-posted from War On Error]
Intro:
Christian apologists from around the world gathered in San Diego to discuss honestly their misgivings about defending the faith. It was an unprecedented, no-holds-barred, “skeptifest” of Biblical proportions. It had been long supposed that Christians could stand up to any intellectual attacks and hence had nothing to fear from brandishing their confidence for all to see. Everyone was encouraged to get their most skeptical thoughts and doubts “out there” and see what others had to say. By some accounts, from some of my atheist friends who were allowed to attend, this apparently snow-balled into mass apostasy. I’m still a little skeptical, but I’ve pulled some intriguing quotes from the transcript. Take a look…
At first everyone was a bit squeamish to speak and a few offered some rather vague random points of contention that really didn’t matter that much to the big picture. Finally, William Lane Craig just blurted out why he’d apparently stopped trusting the Holy Spirit:
Of course, anyone (or, at least any sort of theist) can claim to have a self-authenticating witness of God to the truth of his religion. […] they’ve just had some emotional experience…
Dead silence. Um…that’s the HOLY FREAKING SPIRIT you are talking about. And yet Richard Swinburne cheered Craig on and was remarkably sarcastic noting (with air quotes no less) we’d never want to be forced into certain absurdities based on that kind of evidence:
…if it seems to me Poseidon exists, then it is good evidence that Poseidon exists.
He had the whole crowd rolling with laughter since they all knew that the Greek pantheon had a long history of success in the hearts and minds of ancient Greeks. Were they really going there? Maybe I’m missing something.
Staunch evidentialist, Lydia McGrew, wanted to turn the conversation to more tangible matters and get the ball rolling on discussing her lack of confidence in the resurrection of Jesus:
Well of course the prior probability is very low and we all know that. […]
There’s a most unfortunate passage by G. K. Chesterton in which he says, “If my Apple woman, the woman who sells me apples tells me that she saw a miracle I should believe her. I believe her about apples so I should believe her about miracles.” That’s a paraphrase; it’s not an exact quotation.
I really wish Chesterton hadn’t said that because that’s just wrong as an approach. You don’t just automatically say, “Oh, somebody says they saw a miracle, I’m going to buy it.” You have to have much stronger evidence than that.
Indeed. I can agree with that. Triablogger, Steve Hays immediately piped up with three pertinent examples of the kind of evidence we would need to justify various kinds of similar extraordinary claims:
[In reference to having an alien spaceship] On the face of it, I could discharge my burden of proof by showing you the spacecraft. Of course, you might insist on having it properly inspected (to eliminate a hoax).
So what evidence would I need to prove that I own this unique coin? […] Ideally, the only evidence I’d need to prove that I own this unique coin is the coin itself. My ability to produce the coin upon request. Maybe you’d demand that the coin be authenticated. Fine.
…suppose I call you up and tell you I’ve just won the lottery (and on the first occasion I’ve ever bought a ticket). Surely that’s an extraordinary claim. Naturally you’re skeptical, so I invite you over to my house, where you see with your own eyes both my ticket and the newspaper reporting the winning numbers. I’d say that would be sufficient for you to rationally believe that I’ve won the lottery.
So it was a case of a highly improbable event that required evidence of a[n] admittedly powerful […] kind in order to be rationally believed.
I can’t help but note that it was almost as though the words of atheist, Richard Carrier, were on the minds of all those in attendance:
If Jesus was a god and really wanted to save the world, he would have appeared and delivered his Gospel personally to the whole world.
Recognizing of course that Jesus didn’t do this, Craig spoke up again to say what had been weighing on everyone’s mind since the conference began:
…you are thinking, “Well, goodness, if believing in God is a matter of weighing all of these sorts of arguments, then how can anybody know whether God exists? You’d have to be a philosopher or a scientist to figure out whether God exists!” In fact, I agree with you. A loving God would not leave it up to us to figure out by our own ingenuity and cleverness whether or not he exists.
People were clearly shocked. And it got everyone lingering on the problem of evil. Hays spoke up again to point out that the long standing explanations for evil from Calvinism and Arminianism both suck:
…it sounds bad […] to say that God predestined sin and evil. However, it also sounds bad to say that God allows sin and evil.
Everyone was dismayed by this. How could they all have been defending such bad explanations for evil all of this time? How in the world had Christian apologetics kept up with it? They weren’t all that stupid and/or delusion were they!?! No one especially wanted to hear atheist, John Loftus, say, “I told you so.” Even though their faiths seemed to be cracking under the weight of their collective doubts, they all agreed no one wanted to hear that guy gloat.
Hays had clearly been thinking things through and gave everyone an astute analogy to help explain where most everyone had gone wrong with their apologetic sensibilities:
An ufologist is often a smart, sophisticated individual, deeply committed to secular science. […] And while it’s easy to make fun of ufology, an astute ufologist has a well-lubricated answer to all the stock objections. […] Conspiracy theories are the snare of bright minds. They have just enough suggestive, tantalizing evidence to be appealing, but never enough evidence to be compelling. […] As far as I’m concerned, the issue is not how long it would take for a legend to develop. Anyone can write anything at any time.Almost too proud of himself for how well he’d explained things, something clearly snapped in his mind. Hays collapsed on the floor in front of everyone and started mumbling almost incoherently. It seemed he was talking about himself though he couldn’t bring himself to even speak in the first person:
…he indulges in so many ad hominem attacks […] which includes that constitutional incapacity for self criticism in its judgmental criticism of others which emboldens him to openly expose his emotional insecurities, oblivious to the disconnect between the image he is laboring to project and what is really coming through.
It also seemed that he was admitting that all of his previous apologetic efforts could not be said to:
…move us from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge.
He’d realized that too many people had been wondering if Hays was:
…really that dense, or if he is just playing dumb to advance his agenda.
And whether or not it was always just a “rhetorical tactic:”
…to impose an all-or-nothing dilemma on the reader.
Hays was okay apparently and someone nursed him back to health in a corner of the room as the conference moved on. Was he really talking about himself?!? We may never know.
The next day after Hays had recomposed himself, he was overheard talking to fellow Triablogger, Jason Engwer, about all the horrible things that he’d said about agnostic, Ed Babinski, to get out of the force of the case in Ed’s “The Cosmology of the Bible” chapter in “The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails.“ Hays finally admitted it was implausible to dismiss all the evidence that the Bible embraces a false cosmology:
Mixed metaphors are mutually inconsistent if taken literally, but a wide variety of metaphors can and do figurate the very same concept.
So I guess they did understand the criticism after all to all their hairsplitting? Not sure.
Elsewhere, William Lane Craig was overheard discussing the many universes hypothesis with Robin Collins:
We appear then to be confronted with two alternatives: posit either a cosmic Designer or an exhaustively random, infinite number of other worlds. Faced with these options, is not theism just as rational a choice as multiple worlds?
They both agreed they hadn’t taken the hypothesis seriously enough in the past and that we really weren’t in any position to decide between two rational options. I didn’t think Christians were capable of agnosticism on that issue…
Near the end of the conference there were a lot of tears shed and everyone was looking around at each other a bit anxiously, thankful they had not brought any babies to test their new atheist appetites on or any children to dismember to make sure they were made of all atoms. Triablogger, Paul Manata went around poking walls, waiving his arms up and down, and testing various places on the floor to check on the uniformity of the universe for everyone. He kept yelling, “It’s all clear!” over and over again to the annoyance of all. Finally they told him to shut up and that they should just go with it until further notice. However everyone was still bracing for impact and wondering how they could prepare for the inevitable Nazi-brainwashing-rapist-regime that was sure to sweep the whole world away from them now that they’d changed their minds about Jesus.
Fortunately libertarian renegade and (former) theologian extraordinaire, Vox Day spoke up to call attention to atheist, Sam Harris’ book, “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”:
I have to applaud Sam for having the intellectual courage to seize the bull by the horns; unlike his fellow New Atheists (except Daniel Dennett), he has recognized the weak point of the lack of universal warrant and is attempting to do something about it.
So amazingly, all was not lost.
Outro:
If anyone has any other interesting quotes from the conference, post them in the comments, please.
Ben
-
Tweeting the Harm of the ‘Ex-Gay’ Industry
I hope you enjoyed my April Fool’s joke. And now, for some real experiences with Exodus International.
Ever since our successful petition to have Exodus International’s iPhone app deleted from the app store, untold numbers have had a chance to learn about the insidious “ex-gay” industry and what it actually does to people. So Peterson and some of the other “ex-gay” survivors have started a hash tag on Twitter — #exgaysurvivor — to share their stories with each other and the world. Here’s some of what they have so far:
Whenever I make a mistake, I still fight the voice in my head that tells me it’s because I’m evil and possessed by a demon – @cylestnichole
After my gay-related exorcism, the only thing that went away was my love for myself – @vcervantes
My family was deeply wounded by Exodus International staff – @p2son
Has barely begun to scratch the surface of the ways they have been harmed by their ex-gay past… it is all too painful… – @never_again4
In ex-gay ministry, I was told if I wasn’t changing to str8t then I wasn’t trying hard enough – @gaysexpert
The twisted Emotionally Dependent Relationship teaching is an invasive species that digs into the brain. Awful – @MJaneB65
The thing is, the silent or implied messages were often more insidious than the direct and explicit ones. – @JarredH
I became depressed and suicidal after ex gay therapy. – @jeraskew1
Never would I have considered that there was a problem with the system. I was made to believe I WAS the problem – @gaysexpert
Being told not to form Emotionally Dependent Relationships kept me in fear of love. http://t.co/97hetHL – @MJaneB65
It was awful because so often ex-gay leaders blamed ME for not trying hard enough or trusting Jesus – @p2son
The only time I’ve ever felt separated from God was during my ex-gay experience – @cylestnichole
I was told that if I was gay, God would utterly reject me – @gaysexpert
God is not the author of confusion, but of love. My time in reparative therapy produced nothing but confusion and hate – @never_again4
They told me that I had gay demons. Then that abuse made me gay. Then my parents failed. #exgay ministers misled me -@p2son
They told me my “boy” was too much and my “girl” was not enough. I became nothing. @MJaneB65
college sent me to ex-gay therapy & all I got was a hospital bill after trying to kill myself bc they told me I was sick&sinful – @never_again4
After 10 years of reparative therapy I was hospitalized because I was suicidal – @MJaneB65
Actual Suicide note: “God would rather have me die now than to live with another gay thought.” – @gaysexpert
‘Love Won Out’ came to my college. After that, I attempted suicide 3 times within one year. I never told any of my friends – @cylestnichole
My counselors didn’t believe I existed. And, like Tinkerbell, poison and disbelief almost killed me. I do believe in fairies! – @connoley
-
On prayer: fourteen theses
1. What is prayer? It is the eyes of the world looking back at God (Pavel Florensky).
So if there is a god, then even atheists are praying, every time we criticize its supposed actions as reported by believers and holy texts.
2. Can theology penetrate into the mystery of prayer? Yes: theology burrows into prayer as the ant makes its tiny tunnels in the earth’s immense dark turning orb.
Can theology ever start making more sense than this? I’m not so sure…
3. Once when I was sleeping, the sound of rain on the roof became, in my dream, the hammer of war drums beating in a jungle: a real sound, vibrating in my ears, echoed in the chamber of my dreams. In the same way, the vibration of eternity echoes in the chamber of our world when people pray.
Prayer makes us imagine things exist that are merely constructs of our subconsciousness. Check.
4. Prayer is restlessness and silence and sadness. It is jubilation and a cup running over and the sound of all the gum trees clapping hands.
It is spilled milk and a baby’s fart in the afternoon breeze.
5. ‘We do not know how to pray’ (Rom 8:26). The whole uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth lies in this: that he knows how to pray, because he knows to whom he is speaking. His greatest miracle was not healing or walking on water or driving out devils, but teaching his followers to say, ‘Our Father’ (Luke 11).
The ability to form two simple words and to instruct others toward the same, now that requires bending the laws of space and time! That is a miracle!
6. Why do we close our eyes when praying? Prayer is not a turning inwards, not a withdrawal into the silent recesses of the self. Prayer is open-eyed attention. It is waiting all day on the shore for the glimpse of a rare bird. ‘You must wear your eyes out, as others their knees’ (R. S. Thomas).
I never close my eyes during prayer time. Atheist wins at prayer again!
7. Nothing could be further from the truth than the notion of prayer as a spontaneous inner glow or an uncontrollable gush of sentiment. Prayer is discipline, order, hardship, habit, obedience: whatever it is that makes up a life, that is what prayer requires.
Cookies. Life requires cookies. Prayer requires cookies.
8. Prayer and obedience are one. The monastery – that momentous institutionalisation of prayer – is founded on this truth. In order to pray, I bind myself to a rule, bend my will to another, submit to a grievous curtailment of the self. The vow of celibacy in many religious orders signifies this curtailment. There is some part of what it means to be human that is crushed in prayer. For the person bound to prayer, it would not be right to represent life as fruition, satisfaction, fulfilment.
God loves you so much, it wants to crush you.
9. At the same time, there is no greater freedom than the freedom to pray. Does God command us to pray? Yes – just as you might give water to a thirsty man, and command him to drink. God gives us permission to speak to God: that is the whole liberty of the gospel.
Oh, and I thought there was some sort of “forgiveness of sins” message in there somewhere. Glad we cleared that up.
10. ‘There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in’ (Leonard Cohen). The life that prays is an ontological fissure, a crack in being. In prayer, shards of light break through, and the creatures that dwell in darkness rub their dazzled eyes.
The creatures are living inside the lives? Now I see how prayer is important: it’s inhumane to keep them caged up like that.
11. What is it that really sustains the church’s life and witness? Our sacramental hierarchy? Our teachers and clerics? Our projects and resources? Our thick books of doctrine and law? Or is the whole church perhaps upheld by one old woman who shuts herself away all day to cry to God with sighs too deep for words?
Actually, you know what, I really like this idea. And not just the old women: everyone, go ahead and shut yourselves away for prayer. Get out of the way of the rest of us who are actually working hard to try to make this world a better place.
12. God is colour-blind. All that is powerful and wise and impressive, all those things blur together as a single colour – God can hardly make out the difference between them. Only the small, secret things are clear and distinct to God’s poor eyesight. The secrecy of prayer makes us visible to God: ‘your Father sees what is done in secret’ (Matt 6:6).
God is clearly a hipster.
13. We often complain about unanswered prayer. But if sometimes God doesn’t listen, or doesn’t hear, or doesn’t answer, we ought to be relieved. The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind – and Job was lucky to survive the ordeal. Nothing is more terrifying than the prospect of an answered prayer. ‘For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return’ (Annie Dillard).
Atheists are again the most blessed of all people!
14. Sometimes I think prayer is all that matters. Sometimes I hardly dare to pray.
Sometimes I can’t stop craving cookies. Sometimes I don’t even want one.
-
Almost everyone has heard of Joan of Arc. Yet today few people realize that in 1431, when she was 19 years old, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the Inquisition of the Catholic church because she refused to stop dressing as a man.The Transgender Studies Reader (2006), page 212
-
The Power Key Change in Worship Songs
The Power Key Change – by Philip Aguinaga
Christian worship services sometimes use a defining feature that my friend and I have for years called “The Power Key Change” (It doesn’t matter whether the worship is contemporary or otherwise (What is otherwise, you ask? Use your imagination (and yes, this is a side note within a side note within a side note. I saw Inception recently. Can you tell?))).
I know you’ve heard it, most likely in a Power Ballad. The song will suddenly shift a half step or so higher in pitch to a different key for much more dramatic effect. The Power key change happens when the worship leader (using piano, guitar, or maybe even a harmonica) wants to really let you know that “Yes, we are worshiping Holy God, Mighty and Everlasting”. I guess the intent is to mirror His power by kicking the entire worship session up a notch (Yes, like Emeril. You just know the leader is thinking “BAM!” in his/her head every time the key change happens).
By the way, the orchestral master of this is John Williams. Believe me, listen to the Indiana Jones theme sometime and you’ll understand. Kenny G is a close second, but much more annoying.
That said, in any worship service, there are two people that love the Power key change, and two people that really don’t.
2 People that Love the Power Key Change:
1. Worship leaders
I think they usually love it because it shows off their vocal range, especially the male tenor worship leaders. But to me, I always think, “Look, I love that you have the voice of David. I really appreciate that. Listening to you sing is wonderful. You even have the audacity to dance while you sing, as David did, and in front of tons of people. I wish I lived that boldly. But sadly, my voice is more like I believe Boaz’s was. You know that a guy named ‘Boaz’ could not sing. Yeah, that’s me. Do you really have to sing higher now?”
2. Drummers
Next time you see a key change happen, watch the drummer start to build up, attempting to hit every drum/cymbal twice in the three seconds before the change. I imagine a little dream cloud creeping out of the drummer’s head at these times, and it definitely has a picture of Animal from the Muppets in it. (Another member of the band who I enjoy watching: the bassist. Whenever someone who usually plays the most boring part in worship songs can get into the song, I believe there is hope for all of us.)
2 People that Aren’t so Happy about the Power Key Change
1. Sound/PowerPoint Guy
Whenever a Power key change happens, all order and reason seem to break loose in worship. Now, that could be good, because I guess we are “out of control for Jesus”. But the guy running the slides with the words is frantically clicking to keep up (“Wait, he’s going back to the second line of the chorus?? Didn’t he just sing that?”). Meanwhile, the person controlling the sound board is merely trying to keep the speakers from emitting that annoying screech that is an emergency brake to any Power key change (You see, singing higher usually means singing louder). And if there is only one person controlling the sound and the slides? My heart goes out to this guy. He needs prayer. And an intern.
2. Men
Yes, finally we get to the awkward man-worshipper-voice. First of all, I always appreciate when I hear a man struggling with the Power key change, because that means he is actually singing, instead of mouthing the words. He’s made the effort to make a fool of himself. Why do men seem like fools when they follow a Power key change? Because there is a great struggle within men when the key goes higher: “Do I try to sing as high as everyone else, risking vocal injury? I guess it’s kind of cool to say I lost my voice praising God. Or maybe it’s lame. I don’t know. What I could do instead is sing down an octave. But then I stick out considerably. And I sound less enthusiastic. And maybe I sound like I’m trying to impress everyone. I’m really not. I’m being humble in acknowledging that I can’t sing as high as ‘David’ up there on the stage.”
Or it’s possible I’m the only one who thinks of these things. Maybe so, because sometimes I get distracted by my own thoughts.
Have you ever noticed a power key change?
Yes, exactly!
Genderqueer with a touch of happy humanism.
