If you’ve happened here thanks to a link from Scot McKnight, welcome.
Read this post to learn why I’m selling 9,053 signed copies of Pocket Guide to the Bible.
And while you’re here, why not introduce yourself?
Thanks for stopping by.
The polls are closed.
The winner will be announced Monday.
Thanks for voting.
Don’t forget to vote below for the winner of the Fake Band Name contest. “Rawboned Donkey and the Saddlebags” is currently in the lead, so if you think that’s a completely lame name, then you’d better do something about it. Voting closes at noon today (Friday). Central time. I’ll let the finalists stew over the weekend and will announce the winner on Monday.
Update: The polls closed at noon.
In other news, things continue to progress for the Give Herman A Dollar Experiment. (If that doesn’t ring a bell, read this to catch up.) Our friends Terry Foester and Ben Cooper are continuing to see dollar bills come in for their homeless friend, Herman. A total of $903 individual dollars. When added to a few pledged matches, that provides Herman with more than $2300. That’s some serious cash. Terry and Ben are continuing to meet with Herman, are reading him the notes of encouragement that come with the dollar bills, and are looking at some housing options for him.
Last week, the three of them spent time with Nicole from the Shane Claiborne-related “Ordinary Radicals” documentary. They’ve done radio interviews and been featured in the local newspaper. Just two regular guys doing something small — for one person — and it’s still being talked about.
We could all stand to find something small and dollar-ish to do for someone today.
Who despises the day of small things? (Zech. 4:10)
Update: Tomorrow is Herman’s 58th birthday. Terry and Ben are giving him a party at the park near the place he sleeps. Happy birthday, Herman.
Posted below are the finalists for the biblical fake band names contest. It was hard to pick a top 5, so I went with a top 6. Because I make the rules.
Thanks to all of you who submitted names. Most of them were pretty good. I picked the finalists based on a complex point system of my own devising.
Points were given to each submission if it had the following traits:
1. It was lifted directly from the Bible, word-for-word.
2. It came from the King James Version.
3. It contained a proper name beginning with the letter Z. (Shut up. I make the rules.)
4. I could totally imagine a band with this name along with their genre of music.
Points were deducted for the following:
1. You took too many liberties with the text, i.e. you summarized rather than quoted a verse.
2. If I looked at your reference verse and found a name better than your submission in the same verse…but you totally missed it.
3. Only a bunch of lame-os — or a Christian hardcore punk band — would ever call themselves that.
4. I probably wouldn’t wear a shirt with that name on it.
So the finalists are below, in a convenient poll format so you can vote. So vote. I’ll close the voting on Friday at noon (central) and announce the winner on Monday. I’m not supplying the names of those who came up with the top 6 entries, but it’s not like you can’t look them up or anything.
Today is the final day to submit your entry for the Fake Band Shirts contest. We’ve had some pretty good ones so far. Remember, I’m picking my five favorite ones and then we’ll vote on a winner, who’ll receive a free fake band shirt of their choice.
Thanks, by the way, to all of you who’ve purchased books over the past couple of weeks. I’ve sold nearly 100 since telling you about my personal stash of 9,053 books.
So…less than 9,000 to go! Wheee!
I also appreciate readers and friends Michael Spencer, Ron Fournier, Tone Hoeft, Bryan Allain (Burnside Writers Blog) and Cara Davis (Cheap Ways to…) who’ve promoted the sale and linked here. Thanks, guys.
Fun stuff coming up soon here at the blog. Bear with me for one more week, though. My goal is to have finished the first draft of Pocket Guide to the Afterlife by June 1. At which point I’ll take a much-needed break from book-writin’.
Back on Tuesday. Have a great Memorial Day.
Here’s a question I get from time to time: What’s the deal with your “fake band shirts” thing? I’ll tell you what the deal is: The deal is that fake band shirts are awesome, and everyone needs an awesome shirt.
Actually, it started with Pocket Guide to the Bible. The last chapter of that book — and also of my upcoming Pocket Guides — is just a bunch of random lists related to the topic. Because I like lists. And these topics lend themselves to all kinds of list-making.
One of those lists (p. 186) was called Seven Phrases from the Book of Judges That Would Make Awesome Band Names:
1. The Nether Springs (Judges 1:15, KJV)
2. Cushan-Rishathaim (Judges 3:8)
3. The Heads of Oreb and Zeeb (Judges 7:25)
4. Millo (Judges 9:6)
5. Forsake My Sweetness (Judges 9:11, KJV)
6. The Tribe of Dan (Judges 18:30)
7. Certain Sons of Belial (Judges 19:22, KJV)
By far that was my favorite list from the book. And so at one point last year, I kept thinking how — you know what? — those really would be great names for a band. And then I started thinking about how people like me think they’re cool by listening to or supporting indie bands, especially indie bands no one has heard of. Because we like to be ahead of the curve. We like to be unique. Also, we like t-shirts.
Therefore, the coolest t-shirts are those promoting the most obscure bands.
And what’s more obscure than, well, non-existence?
So I took a couple of the names from the list above (Forsake My Sweetness and Certain Sons of Belial) and came up with a couple more great fake band names (Domino Flinch and the Meddlesome Three and Canine Doubletake).
Then I designed logos for these pseudo-bands and printed up a bunch of quality silkscreened t-shirts for them. They’re available at www.fakebandshirts.com.
And it all started with Pocket Guide to the Bible.
I think my list of fake band names from Judges is a pretty good one, but I’m sure there are more. And every page of the Bible has some excellent options, especially with the King James Version.
So here’s an idea for a contest. Go to Bible Gateway, dig around awhile, and submit your own fake band name from the Bible in the comments. I’ll pick a top 5, then we’ll vote on it. The winner gets a free shirt of his or her choice.
Some of you may know I’m currently working on another Pocket Guide book. This one’s called (tentatively) Pocket Guide to the Afterlife. It’s about what various cultures and religions have thought/taught/believed about what happens after you die. Obviously there’s a bunch of Christian stuff in there, including traditional beliefs about heaven and hell.
And because heaven and hell have become something of a mini publishing phenomenon over the past couple of years, I need to cover Don Piper’s bestselling book 90 Minutes in Heaven and Bill Wiese’s bestselling 23 Minutes in Hell.
(I’m still waiting for 46 Minutes in Irkalla, the Gloomy Netherworld of Mesopotamian Mythology. But I’m not holding my breath.)
Anyway, both the heaven and hell books are pretty interesting when it comes to the subject matter. So, I’m curious…
Have any of you read either of these books?
If so, what did you think?
Did either of these books impact you in any way (positive or negative)?
Please answer and/or review in the comment section.
It’s time for another morsel from my upcoming Pocket Guide to Sainthood (Jossey-Bass, 2009). There were (and are) a whole lot of different religious orders, all of which have produced their share of interesting saints. These include Benedictines, Franciscans, Cistercians, and Dominicans.
One of my favorite orders is the Carmelite order. Not because they have a delicious-sounding name. But because there was a huge schism in the Carmelite order about 500 years ago about whether or not going barefoot was an act of deeper holiness than wearing shoes. As someone who would spend my life in flip-flops if it were socially acceptable, this is intriguing to me (flip-flops would have been a middle ground between the two factions, so I like to think I would have been a real peacemaker on this issue). Anyway, here’s the Carmelites entry from the glossary chapter.
Carmelite
A member of the religious order founded in the 12th century on Mount Carmel in Israel. Its founder may have been St. Bertold, a former Crusader who got disillusioned with crusading after he had a vision in which Jesus was less than delighted by all the forced conversions. But Bertold’s connection to the order’s founding is only traditional. When asked about their founder, early Carmelites would attribute the order’s origins to Elijah or the Virgin Mary, which was so not very helpful. Even today, no one really knows where the Carmelites came from. Except Jesus, and apparently he has declined comment.
Officially, the Carmelite order is known as the Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Its monks and nuns are strongly devoted to Mary and focus on contemplative (and occasionally mystical) prayer. Back in the 15th and 16th centuries, there were a succession of reforms among Carmelite communities that involved a level of piety tied very closely to whether its nuns or monks could wear shoes. Calced Carmelites wore shoes. Discalced Carmelites went barefoot. The turf wars were brutal.
Please use it in a sentence:
People grew less convinced about Jessica’s desire to become a Carmelite nun when she revealed that the discalced Carmelites were her preference because she loved pedicures, and that kind of life required a lot of them.
Not to be confused with:
Carmel-by-the-Sea, a Californian community of writers, poets, and painters, where you’ll find plenty of people walking around barefoot and having visions. But rarely is Jesus involved.
The great bishop, saint, and trinitarian apologist Gregory of Nyssa once described his brother, St. Basil, as having a “two-handed faith.” Basil’s faith, Gregory said, was ambidextrous, because he could accept pleasures with one hand and suffering with the other hand and he was convinced that both were part of God’s plan for him, both could lead to worship, both were avenues toward faith.
I know what that’s like now.
On the one hand I have my Chicago Cubs, a team about which my wife and I are passionate. We’re going to Chicago in July to watch games at Wrigley. We watch games together when they’re on WGN at home. We sometimes record afternoon games so we can watch them at night after the kids go to bed. (Baseball on DVR, by the way, is a brilliant advance in technology. You can condense a three-hour game down to about an hour with judicious commercial skipping and the occasional fast-forwarding of, say, managerial trips to the mound and other in-game time-wasters.)
As a Cubs fan, I also loathe the Cubs’ arch-nemeses, the Cardinals. I respect Tony LaRussa as a manager, but don’t like him much. I respect Albert Pujols as a hitter and all-around person, but don’t like him out of principle. I think Rick Ankiel’s story — though it’s recently been tainted by performance-enhancing drug accusations — is one of the best in baseball (he once was a young, up-and-coming pitcher who forgot how to throw strikes and became a headcase, eventually being forced out of baseball because of it…so he transformed himself into a power-hitting outfielder and, several years later, now starts again for the Cards).
So I’ve always respected the Cardinals but never really liked them. But there’s one Cardinal I have never even respected. Never. His name was Jim Edmonds. He was arrogant. He had dark hair with dorky looking frosted tips. He pouted after EVERY. SINGLE. CALLED. STRIKE. He stood too long to admire his home runs. He made amazing catches as a centerfielder, but most of baseball has always suspected he turned routine plays into diving catches by timing his approach…just so he’d look awesome doing it. Jim Edmonds was a flopper. A surly, full-of-himself, whiny, goofy-looking flopper. All Cubs fans hated him, more than any other Cardinal ever. Ever!
And now Jim Edmonds is a Cub. He’s been a pretty bad player for the last couple of years. He’s close to 40. He’s a little slower than he used to be. He lost his power stroke. He ended up playing centerfield for the San Diego Padres this year, but was hitting something like .180. So they released him. Goodbye, hair-highlighted flopper.
And then the Cubs claimed him off of waivers. Jim Edmonds is now a Cub. And Cubs fans everywhere are experiencing ambidextrous faith as a result. When he started his first game in Cubbie blue on Friday, he was booed after every at-bat…except for the one where he got a hit. Then he was cheered politely. Cubs fans are confused. We want the Cubs to win. We want Jim Edmonds to fail. It used to be that his failure was good for the Cubs. But now? We need him to succeed, even though that goes against everything we have ever wanted.
When Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano — who has had in-game run-ins with Edmonds in the past — was asked what he thought about the new signing, he let out a short “No comment” and refused to say anything else. Obviously.
So with our right hands we pump our fists for the Cubs. With our left hands we flip the bird toward Jim Edmonds. Now we’re going to have to bring those two hands together to cheer for both.
It is excruciating. Help us, St. Basil.
Update: I couldn’t bring myself to post a photo of Stupid Jim Edmonds wearing a Cubs uniform, so Bryan at Prayers for Blowouts did it for me. You can see it here. Don’t look at it too long, though, as it can melt your brain.
