Excerpt from an article by Alan Creech:
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Welcome! You have accidentally reached the blog of a heteroclite follower of Jesus: dave wainscott. I'm "pushing toward the unobvious" as I post thinkings/linkings re: Scripture, church and culture. Hot topics include: temple tantrums, time travel, sexuality/spirituality, U2kklesia, role of the pastor, God-haunted music/art..and subversive videos like these.
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Up until now, Mark Wilkins' life has been pretty much what one would expect from a middle-aged pastor.
Pastor Mark Wilkins got to "Live His Dream" and meet his musical hero.
The 49-year-old man of the cloth has spent most of his life in northwest Indiana. He is wholly devoted to the Crown Point Methodist Church and its worshippers. Oh yeah -- and he loves to blast a little metal.
"If I'm having a stressful day or a really good day, you're going to hear Alice Cooper," Wilkins said. "And you're going to hear it pretty loud."
That's right. The self-described "pudgy" Methodist pastor has had a thing for the iconic rock legend since he was 13 years old. He has every Alice Cooper album and song ever released on his iPod.
So it was the dream of a lifetime when Cooper invited Wilkins onstage to be a part of his horror-infused extravaganza at Live Nation's Uptown Amphitheater in Charlotte, N.C., as one of four winners of "Good Morning America's" Living the Dream contest.
The experience "far exceeded" Wilkins' expectations, he said today on "GMA." "This went so far beyond anything that I could have imagined … it was amazing."
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-St. Alice Cooper: anointed satire vs. sugarcoated praise
..in a wonderfully revealing insight of MacCulloch’s, that the “daily bread” for which countless Christians ask in the Lord’s Prayer is not what most people think it is, a humble plea for sustenance. “Daily” is the common translation of the Greek word epiousios, which in fact means “of extra substance” or “for the morrow.” As MacCulloch explains, epiousios “may point to the new time of the coming kingdom: there must be a new provision when God’s people are hungry in this new time — yet the provision for the morrow must come now, because the kingdom is about to arrive.”
We are a long way from bedtime prayers here.
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"..the Gospel is not that Jesus died on the cross for your sins so you can go to heaven when you die, but that the Gospel that Jesus preached was the Gospel of the Kingdom.
When you say this to people they look at you like you’re insane.
‘Of course the Gospel is that you can go to heaven when you die’, they say.
But the Gospel isn’t a one-time event, it’s a daily participation with Christ in the Kingdom life.”
Interview with Dallas Willard in RELEVANT Magazine
(read it all here)
MacCulloch describes himself as a "candid friend" of Christianity."I have a strong appreciation of the importance of it all," he says. "I've struggled with statements of belief. I think it's hugely important. It's still very important to me. I play the organ and sing in a church choir and I can't imagine life without Christianity. But I cannot sign up to doctrinal statements."
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The Bible as Porn?
Atheist students at a Texas university are offering porn in exchange for Bibles arguing, “same diff.” Inflammatory, to be sure, but are they right? The Bible is indeed full of racy material, from its very first book on. Robert Crumb’s Genesis in graphic novel form warns on the cover that adult supervision is recommended. The Song of Solomon’s highly suggestive erotic poetry is inspiration for a line of Christian sex toys ...
and that’s just a wee sampling of the sex. But pornography isn’t just about sex, is it? There’s something more that makes it what it is… and so difficult to define. There’s
Wouldn’t it be nice to say that the Bible includes no such narratives, images, and invitations? But it does.
,,If we loose our grip on what the Bible can and cannot do, on what we allow that the Bible says and doesn’t say, then maybe we’ll witness the Bible embrace what seems pornographic only to assimilate and transform it into a mandate for the fully realized life for all beings in a family at home on this breathing earth.
1) in a long tradition of U2 songs, before and since, that are commentary on the bankruptcy of drug use (a line from"Bad" to "Unknown Caller" by way of"Running to Stand Still")2)in a long line of songs about time travel..uh, I mean the Kingdom of God, which,as all theologians know, is the same thing. (:
The song is about Zoo station in Berlin that is the pick up place for those getting off heroin.
Alphaville's song Big in Japan mentions it which is about a couple trying to get off heroin - should I stay here at the Zoo or shall I go and change my point of view...
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There is a German book called "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo". This means "The children from Zoo Station". It is a story about a teenage girl who is addicted to heroin. In Berlin there is a well known drug scene at Zoo Station, where young children get money for prostitution.On the "Children of Zoo Station" book, it's true. And the movie synopsis has further U2 connections..if you remember the songs "Discoteque" "Vertigo" and "Boots"/ "Fez" (Let me in the Sound)-------------------------
No. It's from the Communists. You know the 4 parts from Berlin, in that time? Well, there was a train station (Zool�gischer Zugbahn) in the west part of Berlin, but it belongs to the Russians. So what have happened there? The station was full of glass. And the Russian and east-German teenagers had their free cocain from the communist state, to attrack the west teenagers to communism. This is at least the meaning of "Zoo Station". But if it's meant in the song or not, I don't know
Fourteen-year-old Christiane lives with her mother and little sister in a small apartment in a typical multi-storey concrete apartment building in a dull neighbourhood in the outskirts of West Berlin. She's bored and lacks things to do and is sick and tired of living there. She hears of Sound, a new disco in the city center, called the most modern discothèque in Europe. Although she's legally too young to go to the disco, she dresses up in high heels and make-up and asks a friend from school to take her. At the disco she meets Detlef, who is a little older. He is in a clique where everybody is experimenting with various drugs. At first she takes pills and trips, but gradually she becomes drawn deeper into the drugs, eventually ending up as a heroin-addict and prostitute.
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The Berlin Zoo is the most visited zoo in Europe with approximately 3.0 million annual visitors from all over the world. It is open all year long and can easily be reached by public transportation. The Berlin Zoologischer Garten railway station (also simply known as Zoo) is one of Berlin's most important stations. Several modes of transport such as U-Bahn [U2 and U3 etc], S-Bahn and buses are interlinked here.
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I'm ready for what's next... ready to say I'm glad to be alive, I'm ready for "the push," I'll be crawling around on my hands and knees... the whole first verse and bridge is simply about being born.
The second verse deals with the middle teenage years, as the child-becoming-a-man/woman is forced to come to terms with the angst of soon having to leave the safe cocooned life he/she knows (Zoo Station), and go out into the world (The Zoo) to find his/her own way (face pressed up against the glass in anticipation). The train (time) is what carries us along on life's journey.
Pretty straightforward stuff for Bono, IMHO. So the band's new direction, subjecting them to those same feelings of anticipation, uncertainty and insecurity as the child in the song, could well be another level... a metaphor on top of a metaphor.
Is God Still An Englishman from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.
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