I Hate Me.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do and what I hate I do.

-Romans 7:15

When a London newspaper posed the question “What is wrong with the world?” writer, philosopher, and theologian G.K. Chesterton sent this simple letter:

“Dear Sirs,

I am.

Sincerely Yours,

G.K. Chesterton”

I hate me the way an author hates a rough draft. I hate me the way a painter hates his piece in a gallery. I hate me the way a musician hates hearing his song on the radio. I hate me the way a retired boxer can’t take a hit any more. I hate me the way a former Miss America hates her post pregnancy body.

Don’t worry friends, I’m not sitting here with a shotgun in my mouth waiting to post then splatter my attic. I’m not eating myself into an early grave or getting high and watching Sponge Bob. I’m not depressed.

I have found freedom in self loathing.
I think a lot of depression comes from being taught that we can do anything that we put our mind to, that we’re all special, and deep down we are really, truly, good. For years we never heard a teacher tell us “no.” We had parents that made our happiness top priority. We had a government that made sure we had all the food and medication we needed.

Now the dust has settled and we’re all a bunch of middle aged adolescents wondering why everybody was so wrong. If we’re all so special and all so perfect and if we can all do anything why is nothing getting done?

And the self loathing, self medicating, midlife-crisising, self destruction, begins.

I think Kurt Cobain splattered his attic because he proved he could do anything he put his mind to and felt unfulfilled. I think the reason we can have news stories dedicated to celebrity mugshots is for the same reason. Do your best. Try real hard. The world is yours. Then what?

I think we’re all hardwired the same. The operating system might be different but the hardware is similar. Deep, deep down we all know that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we work, no matter how much we accomplish we’re not built right. We have a ton of desire to succeed, do well, make a difference, but we don’t. We all know that somewhere a wire got crossed, a step was missed, a lightbulb went out, and we can’t fix it.

See I hate myself because I see all that I should be, all I was created for, and I get frustrated because I am me and that means I am inherently imperfect. Don’t believe me? When you mess up and you run out of excuses what do you fall back on?

“Well, I’m only human.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

“We all screw up.”

Why do we say it? We say it because not only do we know that we’re not perfect but that nobody else is either. Here in lies the problem. If we aren’t perfect, which we know we’re not, then we will never know complete fulfillment.

I remember a kid in a college class going so far as to say that imperfection is perfection. As an English guy I couldn’t deal with that kind of oxymoron. That was just his way of dealing with the fact that he was messed up and since he couldn’t fix the problem then there was no problem.

But look at us. Look at the world. All the issues, all the crap, all the hate, violence, poverty, it all stems from people just doing what they think is the best thing. It all stems from people meeting their full potential. A dictator feels like he’s the best at what he does so he takes over. The people let him. Another politician feels as though his ideas are the best because he made it to the top, dammit, and then he sends his country down the crapper. The greatest villains are not the one who are unabashedly evil, but the ones who think they are doing good.

Once we see that we can’t be all that we want to be, once we hang up our desire to be that brain surgeon, we settle for good enough. The worst part about “good enough” is that it’s not an appreciating value. We know very well that we aren’t supposed to live this way but, who cares? We’re getting by. Let the good people be good, the bad people be bad, let the smart people be smart and me, I’ll crack open another Coors and call it a day.

Yah, we were made to be perfect. That’s how God made us. Then we messed it up with sin and the whole world has felt the pangs since. You’re right, you’re not perfect, you’re only human, and you’ll never be good enough. Now let’s take these excuses, burn them in a hole, and keep going. There is no picking yourself up by the bootstraps. There’s no fixing the problem.

There’s only healthy self loathing.

I don’t blame God for the world going to crap. I blame me. I blame the human race. We’ve tried Theocracies, Monarchies, Democracies, Anti-Theocracies, Republics, Dictatorships, Anarchy, and Communal living. It all turns out the same way: failure. What is the common factor when things go south? Is it God? Nope.

It’s me.

Album Review: Toil by Flatfoot 56

Flatfoot 56’s new record Toil is exactly what you’d want as the fourth record of a respectable Celtic punk band. If you’ve been following the band since day one, or at least the first album, I suspect you’ll be happy with the musical evolution and lyrical growth of our Windy City brothers.

What’s the first thing you want to hear when you put on a Celtic punk record? Yah, that’s right, bagpipes. “Brother, Brother” starts the record off in perfect Flatfoot style. It’s a bagpipe introed, hardcore tune that is about a drug addict friend and the path he’s chosen. It even has a little hardcore vocal visit from the younger Banwinkle brother. This is the first time since Knuckles Up that the boys started an anthem, call to arms type song and not a short intro song. While the intros on Jungle of the Midwest Sea and Black Thorn were good I’m glad they went back to their roots on this one.

The new single “I Believe it” is a strong song that reminds us what we like about the Flatfoot boys. It’s nice to see a bunch of fun loving, rough and tumble guys who are nice, thoughtful, and okay to bring around your grandmother.

The rest of the album will get you air drumming in your car or cubicle.

The songwriting maturity of Toil is showcased in the title track. “Toil” is a slow building, rebellious, passionate song that is written by and for those of us who work night and day and night to feed those people that go home early.
“6 10” is a fun little story about talking to somebody a lot bigger than you and squeaks out a fun little moral (“why are little people always so bold?”) and “Winter in Chicago” is so catchy you’ll hear it in your dreams. And for all you fans of the Flatfoot live show you’ll get your feet stompin’ on the last track with the crowd favorite “I’ll Fly Away” which has been on their set list for years.
Tobin and Co. are coming out with some great little tunes that strike a chord. If you’re a long time fan like me not only will this CD make you listen to it over and over again but it will remind you why you love their other stuff too.

The rest of the album is solid and worth a listen then a relisten. The band passed around the mic for vocals, there is plenty of crunchy guitars, mandolin, and bagpipes. If you aren’t up and dancin’ then your feet are broken. If listening doesn’t make you want to start a circle pit in the breakroom at work then I suggest you check your pulse!
Start with an anthem and end with a hymn. There was nothing missing from this record except the sweat and comradery from one of their circle pits!

Keep it up boys!

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Stealing From the Fish Tank

…Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” –Luke 5:10b


The church is the people in it. I’ve said that. I am the church (whether you like it or not) you are the church, all the cute pastors in their jeans and blazers are the church (whether I like it or not). The sad part is the people in charge and the people going have forgotten that the church is not a building, committee, system, or program. The people coming to church demand to be entertained and sedated. The people running their church demand to be relevant and earn their keep.
It’s relentless.
I’m not an outsider but I hang out with enough of them to realize that church is now an uncomfortable place. I know a lot people that have “church” faces. We all see it but as church folks we don’t want to be called on it so we don’t call others on it. This creates a very awkward atmosphere for the non-Christian who is seeking Christianity.
We’re not fooling anybody.
I would dare say that’s why most churches don’t have non-Christians in them. They see the church face, they see the perfect pastor, the cute youth pastor and the hipster worship team and say “Crap, I can’t do that,” and then they peace out.
Christians will jump from church to church in a fanciful desire to re-invent their church face. These are the types of people that hop from church to church, don’t get involved with people (but are probably heavily involved in ministry), don’t really read their Bibles, complain about the kids program, then bail as soon as they face a crisis then go bitch about how they had no friends in that church. Then they pack up their families, write passive aggressive Facebook statuses and go to the next church.
Then the next church celebrates that they are growing and getting new families.
This doesn’t sit well with me at all. This only perpetuates the cycle of non-Christians not going to church. Maybe a few will pop in now and again, raise their hand during the time at the end of the service when the pastor offers Jesus to be their band-aid for what ails them. Then they walk through all the people talking to their friends and go past some dude who they don’t know who is chasing them down with a Bible because when everybody else had their eyes closed he looked around like a Falcon at dinner time.

Maybe they come back for a few weeks. Maybe they even get involved. But unless they drink the Kool-Aid and have no issues with anything and as long as they don’t go do any “real” sinning they will have nobody. They aren’t conditioned for this. The average non church attender, non-Christian has no idea how to survive in the Christian culture.

But those of us who’ve lived in it are survivors.

We bounce from each denizen of worship and know exactly how to do it. We raise our hands, we clap, we read the right books, we do nursery, we take notes, we have the church’s app on our cell phone. We are members. We are committed. We can play the game.

One church grows while another fizzles. One pastor is the new wave while another is the old guard. We talk about cycles and keeping up with the times like one day there won’t be another young hot shot with new ideas that we find horrid. We act like we won’t ever be the “old guy.” We act like our church will dodge the 75% teens leave after graduation bullet.

After all, we know how to grow.

When Jesus first called his motley crew of miscreants He called them to a life of insanity. These uneducated, untrained Sunday School rejects were charged with the very mission of giving God to the entire world. “Fishers of men..” meant jumping into deep water with a hand net and scuba goggles. There was no church complex to tell people to go to. There was no radio station to put on in your cubical. There wasn’t even a cute little Christian section at the local book store.

It was twelve men, one Savior, and a soap box.

We’ve lost that. The church used to just be a bunch of people who loved Jesus hanging out, praying, reading the scriptures, and eating food. There was no compartmentalizing. It was all Jesus in every aspect of life. There was nothing flashy, there was nothing sane, there was nothing normal. Christianity was totally out there and uncomfortable. It was completely irrelevant to the culture and focused on our depravity and Jesus’ love. And people were coming in droves.

Every time I talk to a pastor about the “...3000 were added to their number that day...” I get a cop out answer. “Oh, that was the time and place,” or “God needed that to then and not now,” or my favorite, “You have to look at the church universal and then you’ll see God is doing the same thing.” I don’t buy all of this. We make up excuses so we can keep our comforts of church in North America.

We really don’t want 3000 non-Christians showing up to our church this Sunday. They will stink. They will swear. The pastor is going to have to preach a basic Gospel message not a deep theological expose. Worst of all they will sit in my seat and make me talk to them. Don’t think I’m right? Check yourself the next time you go to church and somebody is in “your seat.”

But churchy people know these rules. Churched people look right, act right, smell right, talk right, and live right. Church people are so much easier to live with, work with, deal with, and have on your ministry team. The only Biblical problem is that they only attract other church people.

I’ve been guilty of this. At one point my family started going to this new church and I knew a lot of my old Christian School buddies were unhappy with their churches so I told them to come to mine. They came and loved it. Then I invited some of my non Christian friends and they came a few times and then stopped. Now the relationship was awkward. It was uncomfortable. It wasn’t clean.

We have this idea that when we tell people about Jesus and share the Gospel with them that we’ll have the Full House music play in the background and then Kirk Cameron comes out of the kitchen and gives them a Bible while the credits come across the screen. That would be easy. Sometimes it is easy. Most of the time it’s not easy. We have to be ready to fail. We have to be ready to have people dismiss us.

Nobody likes to be rejected. That’s why most of our ministries are focused on churched or previously churched people. The problem with this focus is that it creates dead faith. Jesus and the Gospel no longer brings people from death to life but rather from good to better. The reason this eventually creates zombie faith is because it looks and feels like the Gospel of Jesus but it really is the gospel of moralism/humanism/deism which is really no Gospel at all.

Having people coming to your church who have no problem (yet) with the fact that they are horrible rotten sinners is distracting, expensive, awkward, and messy. I dare you to find anywhere in the Gospels where Jesus’ preaching is anything but messy. Even when Jesus was dealing with the religious it was messy.

What would Jesus say to you if He came into your church today?

This sentiment is not going unnoticed and I know a lot of people reading this will say that they got it down. Some people get it and nobody is perfect at it. My issue still lies with church leadership. While I do believe in higher standards for Church leaders, I do think it is sad we are snobby about who we give a title too.

I was working for a church as a youth pastor and I had two leaders in my group. Both were funny, weird, a little awkward, and great with the kids. One was an desk jockey who dressed in collars, clean jeans, and short hair. The other was a laborer with tattoos, dreadlocks and tattered clothes. The pastor told me I should invest my time and energy into the first guy because he didn’t like the image of the second guy.

That was the beginning of the end for me. If we are going to have everybody at our churches we have to understand that we will attract people that are nothing like us. We will have people coming through the door that we don’t like. We will have people sitting in our pews that we would cross a street to avoid if we were in town.

This goes both ways and we have to get over ourselves.

I’m done bitching so here’s the fix: Get out of your offices, get out of your Christian bubble, and invite your non Christian coworkers to your house for a BBQ. Live life with them. Show them Jesus through you. You don’t have to wait ‘til Sunday to share the Gospel with somebody.

Most people outside of the church have a good sense for bullshit (most people in the church have an appetite for it). If your faith is real they will know it. If you really love Jesus, they will know it. This isn’t saying they will like it, but they will respect it.

To end this I’ll steal an analogy from Neil Cole: What the church is doing now is like a farmer building a barn, standing in the doorway and yelling for the crops to come in. This won’t happen. We need to get our hands dirty.

Christianity is Dead

“Everyone will hate you because of Me.” -Luke 21:17

“Punk Rock died the day the first kid said, Punk ain’t dead.” -Bill Mallonee


There has been a raging debate as long as I can remember about the status of punk rock. Punk is dead. Punk isn’t dead. Both sides have great arguments. After the surging popularity of bands like the Ramones and Sex Pistols and after The Clash started selling out stadiums the edge may have started to wear off. Then we had bands like Green Day, Blink 182, MxPx coming onto the scene and making it marketable, the old timers said it was done. While bands like Rancid, Minor Threat, Pennywise, Dropkick Murphys, and Bad Religion would make even the most cynical of us believe that Punk will always survive it’s safe to say that it certainly loses it’s way from time to time.

I was talking to some of the Hipster kids I work with and I told them I was excited because Punk was becoming punk again. They didn’t get it. I told them it was simple. Listening to punk was no longer cool or how this generation was rebelling. Thus, it was subversive again. It was underground and could possibly stand for something once again. It was fantastic.

Much like punk Christianity is becoming a subversive subculture again and I am excited. I laugh at pastors and politicians who freak out that our country is not falling in line with the point of view of the Bible. They act as though it is some cosmic treason that non Christians aren’t living like Christians or upholding Christian values.

Uh, Duh?

Let’s face it. Thanks to the 1980s North American Christians have become fat and lazy. For a while we had “Christian” presidents and politicians who convinced us that we live in a Christian nation. We had pastors who, when they weren’t stealing money or doinking their secretaries, were letting us know that the morals in America were strong and Christian. Jesus got radio play. The Holy Spirit put out a top 40 record. Christianity became mainstream. People saw the money that could be made and the power to be had.

Thank Christ that is all changing. It took me awhile to get to this point but now whenever I hear somebody on Fox News or Focus on the Family talk about how the world’s going to hell in a handbasket and how Christian values no longer rule society I send up a quick prayer of thanks. People are ignoring the Bible all over the place and things are going bad. People are either egotistical or lazy. It’s all about feelings and the individual. I’m so freaking happy.

See here’s the bass-ackwards part. It is not the church that’s shunning the philosophy of the world (most churches happily embrace it but that’s another blog for another time) but rather that the world is shunning the church. It feels as though the gauntlet is being tossed down. “We don’t need your church” seems to be the cry from those on the outside. Dammit, they are right.

But now, for me anyways, it’s the best of both worlds.  Want to be like Christ? Go to a Bad Religion concert. Want to be punk rock? Go to a Bad Religion concert sporting a “Jesus Saves” t-shirt. Face it hippies and punkers, you’ve won the cultural battle and the oppressed have become the oppressors. Face it friends of Fallwell, the Left has won and is in charge. Secular humanism reigns supreme. Now we can really be like Jesus.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are some people that are fighting really, really, hard to keep the Christian Culture cool, hip, and popular. I’m not sure if it’s for religious, Biblical, or fiscal reasons, but, dammit, they are working like the Dickens to keep it “relevant.” And why not? Once Christianity loses its marketability it will be harder to follow.

Whoa, what a novel, frickin’, idea. Too bad God and Jesus came up with it first. Then Peter talked about it, and oh yah, Paul, James, John, and way before them we had Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel--yah, see the pattern. I triple dog dare you to find one passage in the Bible where God says, “Go, preach my word, and it’s all going to be chill.” The closest thing we have to that is Jonah and Jonah tweaked out when it happened. When was the last time you preached in Las Vegas and all the casino owners closed up shop and the hookers put sweatshirts on?

I know a lot of you who are coming to this realization that Christianity no longer reigns supreme in North America are about to cry all over your Joel Olsteen books and blow your nose on your Jeremy Camp t-shirts. Calm. Breathe. It’ll be okay. Christianity is dead but Christ is not. For some of you that might even be a scarier thought. This may not mean you have to give up all of Christian culture but you have to give up the idea that it is what saves you. When you get to heaven there isn’t a special house for the person who has the entire Kutless discography.

Christianity has never been based on what we do but on what is done for us. Yes, we show our love for Jesus through our life change like we show love to our spouses through fidelity. That living for Jesus, that love for Christ, that desire for Him and Him alone is what makes the world hate us. Culture is moving in a different direction. This direction is away from the Bible and the saving Grace of Jesus. This makes culture progressive and Christianity subversive. Why? Because obviously if culture is moving in a direction that direction is forward to all those who are leading the charge. The rest of us are dirty, stupid, street punks that don’t value education, science, or rules.
I love it! For thousands of years Christianity meant sacrifice. All over the world Christianity still means sacrifice. In those places Christianity grows like mad because it actually involves life change. It actually costs something. In developed nations Christianity is, “Okay God, you give me this, this,this, and a little bit of that and I will honor you with my Sunday mornings.” You go to places where Christianity kills you, makes you a pariah, or where they are lacking severely in material stuff, and it’s all, “Jesus, you did so much, how can I do more?” We are slowly getting back to that point.
Now check yourself. Does this excite you and piss you off? If you’re scared and pissed ask yourself if you’re a cultural Christian or a Christ follower. If we are cultural Christians we get scared when we see Facebook posts, presidential speeches, and blogs about how Christianity is stupid, science is God, faith in something is key, philosophy reigns, and Christian music is dumb. We get all up in arms and scared because it looks like our culture is getting dismantled. However, if you’re a committed follower of Christ these things are just a little annoying, kinda sad, and sometimes just adorable hissy fits.
Christian culture in the developed world needs to be dismantled. It’s hilarious. People need to make fun of the crap we worship instead of Christ. American Christianity has become to Jesus what Sum 41 became to the Clash: a cheap, laughable, rip off.  
No punkers and Christ followers here we go. It’s time to realize that we won’t ever fit in totally. The question is are you going to be okay with that? 

Danny Exyle is the chief writer for Sinners Circle Blog. Follow him on Twitter if you want his random rantings throughout the day and follow Sinners Circle Blog on Facebook.